


Sky Marked Souls

by AnonymousMink



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Canon Compliant, F/M, Love/Hate, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, UST
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-25
Updated: 2016-02-14
Packaged: 2018-05-16 06:05:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 22,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5816995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnonymousMink/pseuds/AnonymousMink
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompted by cerulean8ullet on tumblr: 'Soulmates get blue marks on their skin wherever their other person gets physical pain.'</p><p>Rey has long wondered whose pain she wears on her skin like blossoms - a brave pilot, a legendary smuggler, a hero?<br/>She never expects to find him on the opposite side of the battlefield.</p><p>Ren has given up on finding the girl who paints his hands and hips sky-like, but then suddenly she's standing over him wearing his new scar. The scar she's cut with her own hand.</p><p>They have been on a collision course since the day they were born, inexorably drawn to each other, and neither one can escape unscathed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Sky

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cerulean8ullet](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=cerulean8ullet).



> Huge thanks to cerulean8ullet for prompting this, and ofcourse to the incomparable SoVeryGeeky for beta'ing for me (and generally being the bestest Reylo galpal ever!)
> 
> This started out as a short drabble but it seems to be growing, I'm not sure how long it'll last yet.  
> That being said - I hope you enjoy!

 

The marks have always been there. An ever changing pattern in pale blue, appearing and disappearing at random. She never really considers what they mean, she’s eight and struggling to survive in a desert that seems determined to kill her.

She’s lucky though.

She’s small, and fast, and crafty. She watches the scavengers and mechanics, picks up languages like scrap from the sand. She learns.

 

Then she’s older and the marks are still appearing. A rainbow of blues blooming across her back, her arms and chest. She pulls her goggles down on days when her eyes have blossomed into cerulean flowers she can’t feel. Some days she can barely see the skin underneath. There’s one that never quite fades away though. A starburst barely bigger than her thumbnail that has taken residence on the left side of her chest, just above her heart.

 

She’s eleven when she finally gets an answer, she pulls her scarf down unaware of the jagged blue lightning bolt that’s split her lip in two. Mashra stares and shakes her head with a look that Rey has come to associate with a smile for the Aqualish.

“You never told me about that.”

Rey frowns, reaching up to touch the sand-worn skin of her face, “What?” Then she catches sight of herself in the side of a dull silver carbon fuse and her heart jumps. “Do you know what this means?”

Mashra is silent for a moment, and Rey can feel her weighing her up even as her heart thunders like the Racers at the Wheel. Then Mashra, in her slow, steady voice, gives her the answer.

“It means you’re soul-bound, my young friend. It means somewhere out there someone is wearing your pain in cobalt, too.”

 

Once she knows, she almost wishes she didn’t. Before they were just patterns, now when she wakes up sky-touched she knows somewhere out in the stars her soul mate is hurting. Hurting bad. It’s rarer now, the marks at least, but she can’t keep from crying sometimes when she remembers the years when she’d wake up blue all over. What was he suffering?

Sometimes she imagines what he’s like. A brave fighter pilot, she reckons, with a helmet like the one she found in the dunes. Or a legendary smuggler. A Prince, or a hero.

 _Does he think of me too?_ She wonders, tracing a new mark on her wrist. The first she’s seen in months. Does he know that his hands are always blue from her scavenging, hips bruised from squeezing through ventilation ports she’s rapidly growing too big for. She’s not a child any more.

_Will he find me before my family does?_

Her daydreams about soul bonded heroes and missing family members fade gradually with the years. She can’t eat hope after all.

 

At nineteen she’s almost forgotten the marks. They slip her mind entirely when she finds a lost droid and gets ripped into an adventure straight out of the stories. She’s fighting side by side with legends, real legends, and uncovering an inner power a desert rat from the Western Reaches has no rights too. She’s fighting great evil too. (She, who’d only ever fought scavengers and drunkards, has a nemesis.) He makes quite the first impression, impossibly tall, wreathed in darkness and lit in red. A monster straight from the stories, too.

It’s almost a relief when he takes his mask off. Human after all. It’s harder to remember he’s evil incarnate when she’s counting the constellation of freckles on his face, lit up by the blue glow of the data panels around them.

Then she sees inside his mind and it’s harder still . She’s pretty sure monsters aren’t consumed with crippling insecurity, drowning in rage and loneliness.

Then he murders Han and she remembers how to hate again. Any internal conflict regarding men and monsters is pushed aside when he drops Finn like a rag doll. All that’s left is the fight. Strike and parry, she can feel him pulling his punches and it fuels her determination. And when she knocks him down, sabre cleaving his face in a diagonal of red, she feels a surge of victory she’s never known before.

He looks up at from the snow and the feeling fades. It’s not anger in his eyes, or hatred or pain or bitter defeat, it’s wonder. Like she’s sprouted wings and offered him the hand of salvation. Mouth suddenly dry, she turns heel and flees. Something deeply unsettling has laid claim to her bones and she can’t fathom why.

 

It’s not until she steps off the Falcon back at the base on D'qar that she gets her reason. General Organa, pale faced and anxious embraces her with a warmth she’s not sure she deserves. Pulling back with a concerned gaze, her eyes trace the smooth line of something she can’t feel. "What happened to your face?“

"My face?”

She stumbles into the nearest wash room, eyes too big for her skull as she finally finds a mirror. There’s a jagged line splitting her face neatly in two. The blue so dark it’s almost black against her pallid skin.

A mirror image of the blow she dealt.

She can’t breathe.

She scrabbles desperately with the fabric of her tunic. There’s a blue patch on her side where the crossbow bolt hit him. She pulls at her sleeves. A cerulean slash where she grazed his shoulder.

 _No. No it can’t be._ She’s hyperventilating now, nails scrubbing against her skin like she might somehow scratch them clean. _Not him._

_Anyone but him._

She remembers waking up bluer than a Twi'lek at the age of seven. Barely an inch of skin showing through.

_He’s a monster._

Three years of marked eyes and arms criss crossed with sashes. Evidence of pains she couldn’t feel.

_He’s a murderer._

She thinks of the one mark that never went away, the one tiny blue patch right above her heart that has become as much a part of her as any of her freckles.

_He's…_

_He’s…_


	2. Azure

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's so much easier to forget when she can't see the evidence, when she can banish it all into a box she's labelled 'never happened'.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, huge thanks to Rellie for being the best beta and fixing all my elephants :-)

 

Kylo Ren has never kept anything from his Master.

Snoke has been on the edges of his mind since his infancy, sinking tendrils of darkness into him until his head as much Snoke's domain as Ren's own. He has witnessed every foible and failure, stood stalwart beside him every time the light side has beckoned. But now, for the first time in a long time he finds he has something he wants to keep back, keep safe. His loyalty has been divided in an instant and it doesn't sit well with him.

Snoke's gaze is not so easily avoided though.

"You've found her then." His Master’s voice is calm. The still surface of a bottomless black lake, and Ren doesn't know what’s swimming beneath it. He feels unease settle in the pit of his stomach. “The girl. She is the one.”

Silent, Ren bows his head, heart racing as he supplicates himself before his lord. He has severed all ties to the light for him, slain his own father in Snoke’s name. He prays he will not be asked to do it again. He does not think he can survive her loss.

Snoke for his part knows he must play his hand well, the boy is a good servant, if he tests his loyalty again too soon he risks losing him. Snoke will not abide that, not when another option presents itself to him. One that could net him two powerful force users instead of one.

"Then... why are you still here?" He asks, affable, letting the warm swell of his power rest upon the boy. I am almighty, it says as it weighs him down, I am your saviour. I will allow you this one reward.

Ren startles, raising his gaze from the worn stone floor for the first time since he's entered, disbelief writ large across his disfigured face. "My lord?"

"You must find her." He commands, almost lazily, from his dais, "bring her into the fold. Together your power will be... unlimited."

Ren nods, and Snoke can hear the boy’s heart lift as he scrambles to his feet. This new surge of emotions is somewhat disturbing, but feelings are a valuable currency. They are easy to barter with.

"Of course," he adds as his protege bows his leave, stilling him in his tracks, "should you fail..." the words trail away and something stirs in the black lake. A whisper of teeth as the weight of Snoke’s power becomes suffocating.

"I will not fail you," Ren promises, chin thrust forward with youthful arrogance. But there is sweat beading on his brow and Snoke knows they're reaching a dangerous crossroads of fate. "I swear it." He falters, “What of Skywalker?”

“Leave that to me. For now your mission is clear. Find the girl.” A wave of his hand and he's gone. Snoke will dangle the carrot first, but, should the boy fail, he will not hesitate to use the rod.

 

-

 

There aren't many mirrors on Ahch-to.

She's glad, Rey has sworn off mirrors. Ponds. Reflections of any kind. Two months have passed since the incident and she's still scared to look at her own skin. Terrified that the dark blue scar across her face lingers still. It's so much easier to forget when she can't see the evidence, when she can banish it all into a box she's labelled 'never happened'. She chains the memories up like rabid beasts and seals them away in the shadowiest corners of her mind.

She pushes it down and turns her mind to training instead. 

Pouring herself into her studies, learning everything and anything Master Luke is willing to teach her. Dedicating herself body and soul to the tasks he sets for her, every moment focused on her new journey.

Her soul mate is an unrepentant monster and there's not much she can do about it.

 

-

 

It's been four months and she can't remember the last time she slept properly.

The nights here are the darkest she’s known, the demons she keeps at bay during the sunlit hours always find her with the moon rise. She twists and turns on her pallet, consumed by visions that hover somewhere between dreams and nightmares.

One day she over-balances on the rocks around the shoreline, falling hard and gouging lumps of flesh from her side. That night she feels him stronger than ever, fueled by an urgency, a desperation, she’s never sensed in him before.

It borders on madness.

He's red and blue and chanting her name like a prayer, an absolution. Over and over until the prayer becomes a howl. Trying to rip the space from between them. To force her back to his side.

It takes every inch of her willpower not to reach back out to him. Not to fling herself across the divide and slam her fists into him until he tells her _why._  

Why it had to be this way.

 

-

 

Six months and she knows she can't stay.

The more she ignores it, forces it aside and convinces herself it isn’t real, the worse it gets. The beast in the back of her mind is breaking his chains one link at a time and she can see the disappointment in Master Luke's eyes every time she falters.

“You have to face it, Rey”. He tells her, face creased with worry. “Whatever you're running from.”

She can't meet his gaze. He's never asked about the marks, never pressed the issue. She wonders if if he knew what it was she was running from he'd still tell her to face it.

She doesn't look for them now, but she knows that the blue kiss that has sat above her heart since before she can remember is spreading. Sky-blue deepening to the navy of the water around the island before a storm.

 

-

 

She leaves Ahch-To on a cloudless day.

She'll be more use to the Resistance, she says, it's better this way. Luke lets her go with a bone-weary sorrow in his gaze he cannot mask. Another protege failed.

 

-

 

The base has moved, another compound on another planet, and yet it’s exactly as she remembers. A mess of people and parts. It smells like oil and ozone and it suddenly feels easier to breathe again. Finn rushes to her side, Poe and BB-8 not far behind, and for a moment at least everything’s okay again.

 

-

 

She finds a holovid in one of the side panels of the Falcon whilst running maintenance. Flicking it on without thinking. Her stomach drops to her knees as he appears in front of her, barely more than a child. All elbows and knees, grinning as he tries to arm wrestle Chewbacca over the holochess table not three feet from where she's standing.

 "Ben!" The voice of Han calls from out of shot, so close she nearly drops the vid, "Just let the wookie win!"

He looks up startled, grin becoming a pout as he realizes he's being filmed.

"Daaaad," he huffs, jumping up and stalking closer to the lense. His arm is stretching towards her and she flinches. "Stop filming!"

The image stutters and stills and, for just a second, she can see a blue mark on his palm.

Her mark.

The holovid falls from her hands with a clatter and the ghosts are gone. The ship is silent apart from the blood thundering in her ears.

 

-

 

It's raining when Leia corners her. A light blue scuff has appeared on Rey’s face overnight and now she's avoiding the others attention, trying not to wonder how he got it. She imagines someone punching him right in his stupid masked face and chuckles to herself.

"Those are rare you know." The General's words pull her from her thoughts, hands stilling over the damaged carbon fuse she's been tinkering with at the back of Hangar 5. "The soul marks."

Rey doesn't know how to reply so she doesn't, she just nods, fighting the urge to pull her scarf up. Her heart sinks like a freighter with it’s fuel lines cut, of course Leia would recognize them. Her son wore them too after all.

"Do you know what they mean?" It's a kindness, an offering Rey doesn't think she’s earned from a woman who has lost so much more than her in the fight.

"Mmhmm." She raises her eyes guiltily, praying the older woman will drop the subject before things can get any more awkward than they already are.

"Then if you don't mind me asking Rey, why aren't you out there looking for them?"

The rug is pulled from her feet and she finds herself stammering over her words.

"Oh, uh, well the Resistance is more important to me right now. This... this  can wait."

Leia grasps her arm and Rey remembers that this woman is more than just a General. She is a saviour of the republic, a princess, a fighter, and the blood of the Jedi flows in her veins too.

"Don't wait." She says, gaze so deep Rey is terrified she can see all of the things she's trying desperately to hide. "Life is short, and this - all we're building - is meaningless without love. Even after everything that’s happened, I don’t regret it. Not a moment of it." She's wistful, eyes a thousand miles away even as she looks directly into Rey's soul. "Maybe if..." The words trail off, bittersweet. Leia smiles instead, nodding to the mark. "Anyway. Don't keep them waiting too long,  it looks like they need you."

Leia hasn't figured out whose pain she's mirroring after all.

Rey opens her mouth to tell her but the words die in her throat. How do you tell someone you're soul-bound to the their son? To the man who killed their husband?

She swallows hard and lies instead. "Sure."

 

-

 

The mission is tame as missions goes. A small crew sent to infiltrate an altogether inconsequential outpost on Kashoon, they've heard rumours of a stockpile of armourments in the forests there. Rey volunteers to help commandeer it if they can, or blow it up if they can't.

It won't be a crushing blow to the First Order but it passes the time. And she needs the distraction.

She signals from her post at the edge of the forest, Jen yu and Ava will scout the rear for the access shoot they know is located there. Alliavan and his crew flank the sides. She's the cavalry, monitoring from the front and ready to lure the few troops stationed there away from the base if necessary.

Twenty minutes pass, the mission is progressing as planned. And yet she can’t shake the feeling that something is wrong, an otherness she has no words for crawls across her skin like sand-beetles. She spirits closer to the base, one hand on the hilt of her lightsaber, the other raised to her commlink. Ready to call them back at a moment’s notice.

A ship is descending into the clearing. Fast. Rey barely has time to call out a warning over the commlink before it lands. An Upsilon-class command shuttle that looks like a huge dark moth settling on the forest floor. The feeling intensifies, then the ramp drops and she understands why.

 

Kylo Ren.

 

He’s striding from the belly of the ship and, even masked and hooded, she can sense his glare. It's almost comical how little he wants to be here. Something they suddenly have in common.

They have been given strict orders not to engage unless mission-critical, unless they are presented with no other choice. She should signal the retreat now, while it’s still possible to melt away without any blood being shed. There’s only five of them and R’iia knows how many stormtroopers, any battle would be little short of a massacre.

And yet… he’s so close.

Temptation pulls at her. Suddenly all she can think is about how she could end this conflict right here and now, end _him._ Drive him clean through with her lightsaber and leave him bleeding out on the ground before he even registered her presence.

It feels like her duty, to the Resistance, to the others on this mission, even if it would likely see her killed a moment later.

She pictures him sprawled lifeless at her feet with a great gaping hole where his heart should be. His fine black surcoat weighed down by the slow-spreading wave of red. Something in her stomach twists and suddenly she can taste the sickly-sweet tang of copper on her tongue.

The thought of him finished should be a victory, a triumph of good over evil. But somehow... it’s not. Even the anger that’s been coiling in her gut, twisting and feeding there like a living thing has gone still.

Would it mark her forever, she wonders, if she killed him? Blue blossoming endlessly across her flesh, a symbol of the deed she’d committed? Or would her skin be her own once more, unblemished, unmarked, completely alone.

The idea disturbs her.

Ren stops moving, as if she’s spoken the thought aloud, and she stops breathing. She's frozen, hand cramping against the communicator wedged in her ear. She cannot speak now without attracting his attention. She knows it.

The low-sun glances off his mask, as he surveys the forest. Taking in every tree, every leaf, and she swears she can feel the weight of his gaze like a physical thing as it sweeps slowly over her hiding spot. Convinced his eyes linger too-long on where she’s hidden herself, shoulder bruising as she braces herself against the rough bark. They will both have blue marks there by nightfall.

Then the moment’s past and he's walking towards what, in terms of First Order bases, must seem like little more than a concrete shack. His demeanour radiating with what she can only describe as a full body sneer as his flunkies rush to open the doors.

He hasn’t noticed her, her stillness shielding her from his gaze as effectively as if she’d hidden under memetic sheet. Something stirs within her and it feels almost like disappointment.

The commlink crackles loudly in her ear, shattering the silence, she startles back at the sudden sound, dry bracken breaking underfoot. "Four-one to troupe leader, we have confirmation of the package. No delivery possible, must return to sender. Repeat, must return to sender. Confirm."

He's seen her.

 


	3. Electric

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fight or Flight. Or none of the above.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My forever thanks to Rellie for helping me fix up the foundations and fill in the gaps <3

She's running. Hand jammed into the send button as she gasps "Confirm. Set charges and evacuate _immediately._ We have some serious company."

The only way she knows how to protect her team is to draw the monster and his troops as far away from the base as she can. Her lightsaber hums to life in her hand, slashing a path through the foliage as she dives head first into the forest. She can already feel his power. The months have dulled her memory of it, toned down the pure electric charge that threatens to engulf her. It coils around her defenses, searching for any weakness to slip through and still her feet.

She’s not the same girl as she was before though, her shields are steady.

The plan is working, she can hear the heavy footfalls of her pursuers over the comforting chatter in her ear as the team readies itself for extraction. “Don’t wait for me,” she commands as she hears the all clear signal, “get out of the blast zone and detonate. _Now_.”

Her footing slips as she jumps a fallen tree trunk and a volley of laser fire blasts past her head. One bolt so close it grazes her cheek, clipping a stray lock of hair from her head. She forces herself onwards, now is not the time to lose ground. Less than a second passes before a stormtrooper follows the laser’s trajectory. Force-flung through the trees by her very angry soul mate. Evidently he’d given orders not to fire.

Good, she has a chance of winning then.

The ground shakes underneath her as a blast rips through the still forest, sending birds flying from the trees in a great flash of light. She dashes towards the next convenient clearing,  finding a spot to make her stand. Her friends are safe, the base is destroyed, the time to fight is now.

They’re not as far behind as she hopes and before she can do much more than stake her position, they’ve gained the clearing. The sinking sun has turned the world golden, gilding the harsh black and white of their armour into something softer, something almost beautiful.

“Don’t run.” His voice is so different in the mask, impossibly deep and imposing as it skitters across her nerve endings. She holds her ground, muscles tense as she takes stock of her pursuers. Nine troopers.

Oh, and him of course.

“I wasn’t going to.” She lunges before she's even finished speaking,  swinging off a convenient branch and powering the full force of her weight into nearest enemy. He drops like a rock. Focusing her powers she shoots out her hand at two more as they try to rush her with stun batons, sending them bouncing into the forest head-first. She can hear the plastic armour thunking satisfyingly against bark.

Three down. Six to go.

She swings left, saber arcing down to drop the knees from the encroaching enemy. Her aim is true, but before she can make contact they crumple like puppets with their strings cut.

Ren.

She whirls, a hasty glance confirming what she already knows. He’s incapacitated them all with a single wave of his hand. Suddenly the ragged sound of her breathing is the only noise she can hear. He seizes the moment and the saber is sailing from her hand before she can even begin to raise her guards. Shutting off mid-air before landing in the undergrowth 

_Show off._

Now she’s unarmed and alone with him.

-

He searches for her for months.

_Months._

His only assurance of her safety written in pale blue against his skin. He hates each mark, knowing somewhere she is hurt, even just a little, but he lives for them any way. Each new bruise is a proof of the connection they share. She is no phantom, but flesh and blood and lurking somewhere just out of his reach.

No planet is safe from his gaze as he scours the galaxy, stretching his reach across the known universe for the slightest hint of her. She evades him. She has become a whisper at the edge of his mind, teasing him with what could be, a changeable pattern of blue marks that drive him to distraction. When he sleeps he sees her through a fog of confusion. He is dancing with madness and he knows it.

She has become a necessity.

His anger increases with each passing day, lashing out at all and any who would question him. He replays their interactions again and again in his mind, finding a thousand different ways he could have held on to her. Fate, for the first time since he’s known it, had rewarded him and he had let her slip from his hands.

He sees her haloed in the moon’s glow as she strikes him down, the pain becoming a distant echo as his new scar paints itself across her face. She is pale, ethereal and unreal in the half light. And _his._

She is what he needs to complete himself.

And he cannot find her.

 

-

 

The mission to Kashoon is a punishment. The kind of bureaucracy he hates. A formality, a courtesy to the skeleton crew that runs this inconsequential station. His annoyance is enough that he almost walks right past her, until a twig snaps and suddenly he can feel her presence. He’s drowning in the honey glow of her aura as she watches them, a wraith in the trees, and he wonders how he could have ever been so blind.

This is not the same girl who left him bleeding in the snow so many moons ago. She is so much more now. Effortlessly graceful in each attack, a sleek, stark fighting machine with shields so strong it’s like trying to read the endless void of space. All he can see is his own thoughts mirrored across her mind as he pursues her through the forest. He will not let her go now she’s in his sight once more.

The storm troopers, Phasma’s insistence, are a nuisance. They’re ruining the moment he’s worked so hard for. The reunion he’s pictured a thousand times in a thousand ways. His imagination is weak when confronted with the reality of her. The sun’s dying rays dapple her with golden light and send his blood racing.

She is glorious.

She takes three of them down with no signs of stopping, no shadow of remorse, he could watch her all day but he is growing tired of the game, impatient to have her all to himself again. A squeeze of his hand is all it takes. Another sends her weapon sailing uselessly into the trees.

Alone at last.

Her eyes, true hazel and wary, never leave him as he approaches. Slowly circling each other in the clearing as he sinks himself further into her orbit. He can see the urges written across her face, fight or flight. A difficult decision.

“Why did you run?” The question spills from him without permission. He must know. He is gaining the upper hand here and they haven’t yet thrown a single blow.

Her eyes widen, the disbelief almost humorous as he feels the ebb of her anger return. Thoughts are all well and good but she cannot shield her emotions from him, they dance across her face as unguarded as a child’s as he takes another step forward. Backing her into a corner.

“Hmm I don’t know,” She snarks, voice rife with sarcasm even as her heart races at his approach. A humming bird in his hands. “Why do _you_ think?”

She’s spitting fury and he can no longer bear the barrier that still lies between them. He reaches up, the whirr-click of the mechanism amplified in the silence as he pulls his mask free. It tumbles to the ground. There is nothing between them now, he can look at her clearly at last, soul to soul.

The blaster that has grazed her cheek with red must have seared his blue, her eyes linger on the mark as she takes another step backwards. He presses his advantage.

“You know what this means.” It’s a statement. He touches the place he knows the mark must be on his face and knows that she knows. The truth of it’s burning in her eyes, the acknowledgement of the marks that have bound them together since birth. And yet, she’s still trying to run. He doesn’t understand. _Why is she fighting this?_

He has felt the loneliness in her, so strong it was like plunging head first into ice water. All air stolen from his lungs. Felt her hunger for more, for power and belonging and _love._ She has been alone, incomplete, for as long as he has. They don’t have to be any more.

“It means _nothing_.” Her voice is venomous as she tears her eyes from his, denying the connection completely. The black grip around his heart tightens, anger surging from the dark places in his soul as he takes another step. She gasps as her back hits a tree and he closes the distance completely, invading her personal space until he has ensured her whole world is filled only with him. He would block the sun if he could, tear the world apart until they were all that remained.

“ _Liar_.” The word is low, velvet fur and poisoned claws, but she flinches as if he had shouted it. Her gaze fixed determinedly anywhere other than his eyes. He draws his saber, the sound of the crimson beam rushing to life almost drowning out her sharp intake of breath. Her face is bathed in red, eyes wide, accusing. As if he could ever hurt her.

He takes a half step back, raising his arm towards her and pressing the red-hot blade to himself instead. The fabric of his sleeve hisses and melts, the skin not far behind as he drags it slowly, meaningfully over the sensitive flesh of his inner arm. He will _make_ her acknowledge it. The pain is immediate, a sharp, focusing burn.

She is horrified. A true reaction at last. He smiles and stores the weapon away.

“It means,” He rumbles, taking hold of her unresisting arm and drawing it up between them. She’s unable to look away as he pulls her sleeve up, revealing the dark blue blur that has smeared itself across her flesh. His mirror. She shivers under his touch as runs tender fingers across the brand, lifting it to his mouth so he can taste the sweetness of her skin. “You are mine.”

-

 

“It means,” The words echo in Rey’s ears, the acrid scent of charred flesh filling her head as he draws her arm to him. Suddenly she’s back in the forest of Takodona, frozen before him, only he doesn’t need his powers to stun her now. His presence is enough. He cradles her wrist in his hands, delicately, like she’s made of glass. Inching back the fabric of her sleeve to reveal the mark he’s made there. She cannot deny the connection. It’s written across her arm like the signature on her death warrant. His touch is unbearable in the stillness, soft and menacing all at once and turning her blood into lava. He presses a kiss to it and she swears she can feel her skin _burn_. “You are mine.”

Then she's moving without thinking. Driving her fists into his shoulders, he stumbles back, taking each frantic blow without trying to block it as everything she’s been repressing over the past ten months comes screeching out.

"I’m not _yours.”_ she hisses, “You-” she whirls, jabbing her elbow into his sternum, “Don't you understand how long I waited" she’s panting, raw nerves and senselessly violence given form. "How _alone_ I was?" she swings hard and fast, he watches the colours bloom against her skin as each blow lands. "You were..." — blue roses form on her shoulders — "you were..." not that she can see them through the angry tears that course down her face as the dam finally breaks — "you were _supposed_ to be-"

He catches her fists at last, and she stumbles. Her outburst leaves her exhausted, tear-stained, hating him for ever putting her in this position. For making her feel this way.

"I was supposed to be someone else," he finishes for her, "a hero." He sneers and jerks his head back towards the base. "A brave fighter pilot, perhaps? A legendary smuggler. A soft hearted traitor." She flinches as each word lands like a knife between her ribs. "You didn't get the happy ending. You. Got. _Me_."

Her mouth is dry. He’s right. Of all the creatures on all the planets in the entire universe the fates have matched her soul with his and she hates him for it. More though she hates herself because, despite every harsh word and bloody memory that lie between them, she feels more alive now, here, with him, than she has in the ten months since they parted. Heat has sunk deep into her bones and she longs to rip the black cowl from his neck. Tear it to pieces and taste the pulse where his throat meets his shoulders. A sharp, shameful pang of desire races through her body, almost painful in it’s intensity. She hates how easy it would be to succumb to the temptation he offers her.

Something cuts through the heat of her thoughts, a sound in her ear she’s almost forgotten. Bright lights flair beyond the tree tops alongside the distant far off screech of familiar engines. “Heard ya needed some help” Screeches a familiar voice into her forgotten comm-link in between joyful whoops of laughter. “We brought the whole team, report your location Rey-gun.”

Poe. The Resistance has arrived just in time to save their skin. Her skin.

If she can only escape this confrontation that is.

If she can find the will to.

Especially since Ren hasn’t heard what she has and he’s still looking at her like he’s seconds from devouring her whole. She doesn’t know if she can find it in her to object. If she even wants to.

She has only one card left to play now, the riskiest of them all.

“How can I be yours?” She asks, trembling for a dozen different reasons. The least of them not the way his leather gloves are scorching into the flesh at her wrists, holding her tight against him. “You’re not a hero. A happy ending. I don’t even know what you are.” She holds his gaze. “ _A mask_.”

The words send him spinning, she can see it in the depths of his black eyes as she breaks her hands free from his suddenly slack grip. Twining her fingers into the wool of his scarf, she drags herself into him until all she can feel is the warm press of his body against her. All she can smell is the spice of his skin. “Show me who you are.” She demands.

Then, in a move that borders on the suicidal, she drops her shields. Every barrier she’s erected in the last ten months gone until she is completely open to him. Vulnerable and exposed before his gaze. He reaches up, firming a hand against her face as he closes that final gap and claims her. Truly. His mouth burns through her as he buries himself into her mind, every inch of him sinking into her until she cannot tell where one begins and the other ends.

For a moment she’s drowning, mission forgotten as she succumbs to the heat of his touch, the force of his mind as his memories merge with hers. Her bones have become liquid fire, her heart an electric pulse that’s rushing in her ears. His loneliness is overwhelming her. The desperation of his kiss sending her spinning as his mouth moves against hers. His hands mould against her hips and the fire roars. Then the mission returns with a guilty pang and, before he can even think to slam the gates closed, she squeezes her power around his mind. Sending him spiralling into unconsciousness.

She catches him before he can hit the ground, floating beside her like one of Master Luke’s rocks. Guilt already gnawing at her for what she’s had to do. Her deception, even against her enemy.

She leads him back to the burning remains of the base, calling her intention into Poe and his crew as she dodges tree branches. Only pausing to retrieve her fallen saber. It’s slow going this time round, unwilling to do him further harm as she curses herself with every step. Her lips burn with the ghost of his kiss.

He tasted like home.

The Resistance is waiting, the remnants of a battle she’s missed sprawled around the transporter that’s landed in the midst of the clearing. Ren’s own shuttle is now little more than a melted husk. They stare at the prone form beside her, a mixture of horror and hatred and disbelief on their faces that has her skin flushing despite herself. She fights the urge to leap in front of him and banish them all from looking. From judging him, from judging both of them.

“Is he dead?” Alliavan asks, hopefully, face turning sour as Rey shakes her head. “Shouldn’t he be? I mean - we should finish him off right?”

“Yeah” A secondary crew member, one of the red squadron if she remembers right, replies. His eyes harder than marbles. “That’s the masked bastard from the First Order.”

She steps in front of her prone charge. Chin raised in defiance of the others. “No.” The word is final. “He has knowledge of the First Orders plans, and of the location of Supreme Leader Snoke. We’ll take him to the General and let her decide what to do with him.”

There is grumbling in the ranks but no one dares defy her. The sight of the tiny girl holding him effortless suspended beside her is enough to keep even the most discontented mouth silent. They only dare touch him long enough to pull the tracker from his belt, letting her carry him alone into the belly of the ship.

- 


	4. Steel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey can be cruel.  
> But Ren can be crueler still.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, my biggest, brightest thanks to my Psychic Trash Buddy 4lyf and bestest beta - Rellie! <3

  


This is probably the cruelest thing she's ever done.

The base is lit by floodlights when they touch down, flashing off the haze of rain that hangs in the air. The crew gives her a wide berth as she once more lifts the body into the air. Any of the others could take him now, they are more than strong enough to move him without aid of magic. No one offers.

Even Alliavan, who hands her a pair of stun-cuffs ‘just in case’, won’t touch him.

It’s as if his darkness will taint them on contact.

For all Rey knows it might.

Kylo Ren slumbers on. Unexpectedly young and perversely innocent seeming under the fluorescents as she leads him down the ramp.

Someone’s radioed ahead, not her. It’s one conversation she’s gladly avoided. General Organa knows what’s coming.

Knowing isn’t enough though and the look on Leia’s face as they hit the tarmac shames her. The pain is visceral, written in a heavy hand across her features. An unsubtle ballad to everything she’s been through, to the endless losses she’s endured.

It only lasts for one sharp intake of breath, then the General has squared her shoulders. Barking orders like it’s any other mission.

“This way, Rey.”  


-

 

“I don’t understand.” Finn says, and it’s clear from his expression he truly doesn’t. He's kept pace with them since the shuttle landed, the first to offer his help. “We’re gonna keep one of the most feared dark force users in the galaxy from murdering us all in our beds with… a giant lizard?”

They’ve gathered in Hangar Seven, the cell block, the Alliance hasn’t had much need for it but it’s been kept prepped anyway. Ren has been deposited in the corner cell, caged in on two sides by the buildings concrete walls, and on the other two by steel bars and stun-fields. They’re ignoring the dark shape of him slumped there, for the sake of their own sanity.

The General has appeared from the side room, wheeling a gigantic wire cage into view and setting it just out of reach of her son’s prison. There’s a strange kind of long-haired lizard in it. Finn, despite his disbelief, rushes to help her lift it onto a strange wooden platform that has obviously been designed for this very purpose. The contents of the cage shifts.

“Oh my bad. Two lizards.”

“Not lizards,” There’s a tightness in Leia’s voice that seems entirely appropriate for the situation. “Ysalamir.”

Rey hangs back, keeping herself at the very edge of the hangar as she watches the scene unfold. She’s locked her shields up tight enough that she can’t even feel a whisper of Leia’s pain. She doesn’t want to. Focusing on Finn's incredulity instead.

“Kinda failing to see the difference here.” Finn wrinkles his brow at the mess of fur and scales within the cage as the creatures move slowly over the support, sinking their talons deep into the wood.

With a long suffering sigh Leia gestures for Rey to join them. She startles, taking a reluctant step forward. Guilt has hollowed her out, and yet she’s still not sure what it is she feels guilty about.

Knocking him out? Bringing him here? Forcing this confrontation on Leia’s already heavy shoulders? The kiss?

All of the above?

“Come on,” Leia beckons impatiently and, eyes focused firmly on the floor, Rey goes.

She hasn’t made it halfway across the room before she feels it, it’s like walking into the ocean. Everything is becoming oddly muffled the closer she gets to them, only it’s not the sounds or the sights but something else. An awareness she’s never thought about until it’s not there anymore.

“Actually-” she runs a hand over her face, trying to swipe away the strange thick emptiness that’s taken residence in her head. “I think I’d rather stay over there.”

Leia smiles wanly, reaching forward to pull her gently into their circle. “Now use your powers.” She gestures dryly at Finn. “Push this one back a few steps for me.”

“Hey!” Finn protests, pouting. “Don’t be pushing me with your freaky Jedi powers. That is _not_ what friends do.”

He’s smiling though and Rey feels her lips twitch in an echo of his. Finn is the one constant she’s most grateful for, his warmth. The friendship he offers with no strings or conditions. His ability to survive every awful thing that's ever happened to him and still come out of it fighting.

She flicks her fingers at him, sending her powers spiralling in what she knows will be little more than a playful shove.

Nothing happens.

Brow furrowing she tries again, harder, but Finn’s going nowhere. His face turns smug as she waves her hand at him idiotically.

“I - can’t.” Flick. Flick. Silence. She can still _feel_ the force, it’s everywhere after all, but she can no longer access it. The bonds that bind her to it have been severed, leaving the familiar weight of her power sitting just out of her reach. She tries to lift the cage. Nothing. Reaches gently towards the others minds, just to see if she still can, but it’s useless. “What...”

She is powerless. Disconnected. She wonders if this is how everyone else feels all the time and suddenly doesn’t know how they can stand it.

“Ysalamir have a natural force blocking property,” Leia explains, dropping her fingers through the bars to scratch one of the beasts heads. “ _He_ won’t be able to use his abilities here, or contact Snoke.”

 _He._  They remember the reason why they’re there. Rey draws back, guilt returning as Finn shoots a dark look over his shoulder at the still form in the cell.

“I like these lizards.”

 

-  


It takes everything he has to pull himself from the void and into the waking world. He is dazed, dizzy, unsure of what exactly has transpired, or how long has passed for that matter. His last memories burning like stars behind closed eyes.

She’s everywhere at once. Mind, body and soul wrapping around him until he’s drunk on her. There is nothing left between them, hearts thundering in time as minds and mouths meet, a desperate battle of wills that shakes him to his core. It’s what he’s dreamt of. Waited for. And it’s so much more powerful than anything he’s conjured in his mind, alone in the long hours of the night.

It’s a stark contrast to the cold concrete floor he awakens on, caged and confined by invisible enemies. The familiar strength of his power is gone and he realizes what truly has happened. Being cut off from the force is like having all of his limbs severed at once.

Humiliation washes over him, the seed of self loathing the lives within him sprouting new thorns. He starts to his feet, a white-hot whiplash of rage running through him, seeking to destroy anything he can in the nearly-empty cell. Anger has long been his true companion, the only relief he knows from the burning self-hatred that threatens to overwhelm him.

How she could have done this? To _him?_  After everything that’s happened?

He hurls himself against the bars and the stun-field knocks him back like he’s nothing. The shock has him reeling, he reaches again and again for his powers but they never respond. Slumping back to the ground he clutches his head until the dizziness fades and he can think again.

She has done this to him, chained him up like a dog and abandoned him. But he has seen inside her now. Seen everything she’s tried to hide from him.

She _wants_ him.

He felt her need like a mirror of his own, the undeniable desperation to be near the other. She can try and fight it all she wants but he’s seen the truth.

Exhaling hard he settles back against the cold stone, letting himself fall into a meditative state. The situation may not be ideal but he is close to her now, he knows it instinctively. When she comes to him, as he knows she will, it won’t take much to pull her to his side. To finish his task and unite them in the darkness.

All he has to do it wait.

 

-

 

Rey is not the first visitor he receives.

“General.” He maintains eye contact. His Master wouldn’t like it if he shied away, it would be a sign of weakness and he has already shown too many of them by getting captured in the first place. She’s older than he remembers, new webs forming at the corner of her eyes, but he’s not foolish enough to equate age with weakness.

“So it’s come to this,” there’s too much pity in her voice, he sneers at it. “Ben.”

He doesn’t allow himself to flinch at the name. Not any more. “I will tell you the same thing I told your husband before I killed him.” He keeps his tone flat, shoulders straight. “Ben Solo is dead.”

She’s silent for a minute, and, for just a moment, he thinks he’s won. But Leia doesn’t crumble. She doesn’t move at all. The minute becomes two as she holds his gaze with fathomless brown eyes. His eyes. Sweat starts to bead under his collar. He wishes again he had his powers back, that he could feel the familiar heavy weight of the darkness around him. Without it he is vulnerable, and she is looking straight through him. Just when he thinks this uncomfortable moment will last forever she stands.

“Kylo Ren or Ben Solo,” she says, still holding his gaze even as she turns from him, “You’re still my son. Someone will bring you something to eat later.”

Then she’s gone and he’s left winded. Gut-shot and furious at himself for how deep her words have stung him. He wrenches his hands against the chains, sending the steel chair they’ve left him crashing across the floor, the manacles ripping the skin from his wrists.

The pain is good, it keeps him focused. Without the connection to his powers, to his Master, he will need it.  


-

 

Days pass and Rey has still hasn’t come to him.

The frustration builds, amplified by his vulnerability.

The General has returned several times but he refuses to give her the information she desires. Let them beat it out of him if they must. They’ve been remarkably restrained so far but he knows it won’t be long until they show their true colours.

He wonders if they have found out about their connection somehow, if that’s why Rey never accompanies the misfits that try and coax his secrets from him. The Traitor, the Pilot, the General. If they've shunned her now, banished her from his side. He dismisses the thought almost immediately. No, if they knew about the marks, what they meant, they’d send her in in a heartbeat to try and unlock his secrets. For all their preaching, they would willingly feed her to the lions for what he knows.

As the General stands to leave he leans forward against the bars.

“How’s the girl?”

Her gaze is instantly wary, searching for his angle. His play.

“Someone will bring you food shortly.” Is all she says. The same thing she says every evening before she goes.

He sits back. Rey has waited too long, it is time for him to force her hand.

 

-

 

Rey ignores the situation for as long as she can. It’s too surreal. She’s careful not to stray south of Hangar Four for any reason, spending days fixing imaginary problems on Black One to occupy her hands. Her mind however is harder to tame, almost unconsciously untangling the web of memories she retains from the forest.

Her head aches when she thinks of him, she can no longer just see Kylo Ren, dark force user and enemy. She sees him as Ben Solo, five and already lonely, ten and scared of the darkness that keeps finding him in his sleep, fifteen and angry at the world for failing him. She sees Kylo Ren at twenty, fighting for power he doesn’t understand, twenty five and terrified he’s not living up to the legacy he’s set himself, twenty nine and killing off the things he loves most to prove a point. Thirty and falling apart because it’s still not enough.

“Yo Rey,” Finn calls her out from under the ship, she’s been scrubbing carbon off the hull for hours. “the General wants you in Hangar Seven.”

“Me?” She nearly cracks her head on the metal shell as she scuttles out. “Why?”

“Maybe she thinks you’ll have better luck then we’ve been having.” He sighs, following her as she searches the work bench for a rag to wipe her hands on. Stalling. “He’s not talking, well, nothing useful at least, and she won’t let Poe crack out the extra muscle until she’s exhausted all our other option.”

“Oh.”

“Of course I think we should just cut to the chase and hit him till he speaks, but hey.” He grins, shadow-boxing the air as they cross the compound. “Not my call.”

“Right.” The blood drains from her face at the thought, the blue manacles that have formed around her wrists and ankles are bad enough. If someone actually punches him - she’s ruined. Everyone will know.

Finn catches sight of her expression and pauses, a warm arm wrapping around her shoulder as he tries to comfort her. “Hey - Don’t worry, Rey. I’ll be right beside you, he can’t hurt you now.”

She wonders if there’s a word for wanting to laugh and throw up at the same time, because if there is she’s definitely feeling it. His kindness is almost too much for her. It makes her feel like exactly the worst kind of person for not confiding everything to him. But how can he understand, how can anyone, when she doesn’t even understand it herself?

Poe greets them at the door, waving them past the guards and into the gloom of the hangar. All trace of sunlight vanishes as they’re enveloped into its hush, footsteps echoing eerily against the dim humm of the back-up generator. It takes a second for her eyes to adjust to the darkness, and then a minute for the rest of her to adjust to the sudden loss of her powers.

“The General’s just stepped out for a sec,” She can see Poe's trying to play it cool but the slight tic in his jaw betrays him. He’s almost as stressed as she is. “So in the meantime lemme give you the tour!” He leads them deeper, ignoring the fact they’ve all been there before. Rey fixes her gaze straight ahead. “That’s a wall, we’ve got a little break room over there, weird space lizards, coupla chairs annnd, of course, our resident evil, brooding dark lord in the corner cell.” He grins, “It’s not much to speak of but it’s home. For him, for now, at least.”

Poe jerks his head at the place she’s been avoiding looking and she can’t stop herself. He’s sitting just inside of the bars, hunched over and staring right at her. He’s even paler than she remembers, his scar burning in dark relief against his skin. His clothing rumpled, torn where the steel that binds him hand and foot has chafed his skin raw. And yet, even caged and chained and cut off from his powers, he’s a force of nature.

“You came.” He acknowledges her like they’re meeting for a drink at the Outpost, like they haven’t been stuck in a self-destructive collision course since their infancy.

Rey grits her teeth, molars feeling like they are grinding down into dust as she struggles to untangle the mess of overlaying people he’s become. For now it’s easier to let him just be Kylo Ren. Unwanted soulmate and all around bad news.

“Pipe down, dark-mask.” Poe rolls his eyes, aiming his shock-baton through the bars of the cage.

Rey leaps forward before she can stop herself, halting him in his tracks. “Not the face!”

“Huh?” He looks at her like she’s gone crazy and she finds herself fumbling for an excuse.

“I don’t think the General would approve, that’s all.”

Poe shrugs and jabs him in the shoulder instead. Ren doesn’t flinch.

“They don’t know, do they?” He smirks at her, inky hair spilling in front of his face as he watches her. Only her.

"Don't know what?" Finn asks. Fierce, brave Finn who has lost as much to the man in the cell as any other. "What's he talking about?"

She fixes her eyes on Ren, trying to telegraph a thousand thoughts with a single look.

"Don't." She says, and it sounds too much like a plea for her liking. _Don’t you dare._

"Don't what?" Finn looks hurt, confused. Unthinkingly Rey tugs at her sleeves, trying to cover as much of her skin as possible. He can’t know.

“Why haven't you told them?” Ren asks, leaning forward against the bars as if they’re the only two people in the room. His voice rubs against her spine like velvet, sparking memories of his touch. “Afraid? Ashamed of what they’ll think?”

“Hey, I said shut up.” Poe bangs a fist against the bars, forcing him back. “If you’re gonna start talking you should probably start with where your creepy leader’s hanging out these days.”

Ren takes his eyes from hers at last, fixing them instead on the man with the shock baton. “You weren’t so talkative the last time we met.” He says, almost as if he’s commenting on the weather. “You favoured sobbing, if I remember correctly. Your mother always looked so disappointed of you in your memories. You should be thankful she died when she did.”

The muscle in Poe’s jaw jumps and then he’s roaring, leaping towards the cage, he smashes the hard edge of the shock-baton solidly into the side of Kylo’s face. Consequences be damned. Moving to strike again, to finish it, but Finn’s on him too soon. Pulling him back before he can do any more damage and being fought every inch of the way.

“You murderous fucking monster,” Poe spits, “I’ll kill you - Are you listening? _I’ll kill you myself_!”

Only Ren isn’t listening. He's grinning, full on grinning, despite the ugly redness that’s spreading across his face. Blood drips from his eyebrow and into his swollen eye, but he doesn’t look away.

Poe falls silent, Finn’s grip slackening as they turn to follow his gaze.

To Rey.

She’s speechless, mouth parted in a ragged little gasp of shock. She can’t take her eyes from his face. From the injury. She lifts a hand to her cheek but she can’t feel the mark. It doesn’t work that way.

She knows it’s there though, she can feel it in the way his eyes caress her skin.

 _Look_ , his eyes say as he leans through the bars of his cage, _now they know who you are. Now they know who you belong too._

He has marked her to prove a point and she wants to smash his face in herself for it.

“Rey- what-” Finn can't even finish the sentence and shame washes through her as she sees his face. Confusion slowly giving way to horror as he realises the significance of the dark blue mark blooming around her eye.

Poe is looking at her like she’s grown horns and a tail.

This isn’t a conversation she can have. Not now. Not in front of him.

So she does the only thing she can think of. She runs away.

Heading for the door even as the General is opening it.

She nearly knocks the other woman flying.

“Rey-” Whatever she’s about to say dies as the takes in her young charge’s distraught face. The bright new sky mark marring it. Then she sees behind her, to the shocked looks of those inside and the blood congealing on her sons face.

Rey watches the pieces click into place through her tears.

“I’m sorry-” she hears herself say, “I’m sorry-”

And then she’s gone. Running as fast and as far as she can. Behind her she can hear the dark little chuckle of his laughter, louder than it should be. It follows her into the rain, the sound echoing and amplifying in her head until it’s drowned out everything else.

Nothing will be the same now.

 

 


	5. Cerulean

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things get better.  
> Things get worse.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Forever thanks to Rellsbear, queen of words, boss of betas <3

 

The fall out is both better and worse than she has imagined. If Kylo Ren thinks that forcing this revelation will be enough to alienate her from her path and drive her into his arms, he is wrong.

She is the girl who thrived alone in a wasteland.

She is the girl who can fix the unfixable, and fly spaceships on theories.

She has won battles and destroyed planets and bested him.

It will take more than this to crush her.

Finn is the first to find her. Running right after her into the driving rain.

The moment feels wrong. This scene should take place at night, not in the weak glow of an overcast afternoon. He catches up to her at the back of the scrap yard, enveloping her at once in the safety of his arms.

His forgiveness is immediate and unconditional. He knows all too well the cruel cards fate can deal.

Rey smiles through the raindrops staining her face and hugs him back, wishing again and again that it could be his marks she’s wearing. Loving Finn would be so easy. Like breathing. But it can’t be, even thinking about it feels like a betrayal.

Not to her, and certainly not to Kylo Ren. But to Finn.

He deserves a hundred, a _thousand_ times better than the half love she could offer him.

He doesn’t seem to understand the truth of it.

He sees the sky marks as an inconvenience, an uncomfortable coincidence Rey can simply avoid by not looking at her skin. By avoiding Ren. He hasn’t felt what she has, the draw of the bond. She wonders if Finn would be so forgiving if he knew how strong the pull has gotten, how much she’s grown to need their enemy. If he knew how _alive_ she felt when standing beside him.

“Have you thought about just going away for a while?” He asks, concern shining in his warm gaze. “Maybe go back to Ahch-To and finish your training? Become a proper Jedi?”

She sighs. Feeling like the the weight of the galaxy is resting on her blue-bruised shoulders.

“I don’t know, Finn. To be a Jedi you have to be - you have to more. You have to give up your anger completely, offer absolute forgiveness to everyone who has ever wronged you and carry yourself wholly in the light.” Leaning back against the rusted metal fence she tries to put words to the thoughts that have been chasing her since she left her training. Praying he’ll understand. “If this thing, this bond thing, has taught me anything at all it's that there's darkness in me.”

Finn’s eyes widen in almost comical alarm and she lets out a quiet little laugh, pressing a comforting hand to his arm.

“Not like that. I’m still running all systems at least eighty percent goodness. But-” She hesitates, taking back her hands and wrapping them around her waist. “There's anger in me. At my parents. Him. Everything. I don't think I can give it up yet. I'm not ready.”

He nods, understanding at last. Then again he has a lot to feel anger over too. The First Order, Hux and Phasma and Ren. But he loses grudges faster than anyone she has ever known. Forgiveness comes so easily to him.

Finn would make an excellent Jedi.

 

-

 

Poe has a harder time accepting what he has seen in the hangar. Soul marks are rare enough that it takes an awkward discussion with Finn before he even realises what it is he now knows. It’s not something he has ever had to fathom, always certain that were was good and bad and that they had very little overlap.

Finn cuffs him round the back of his head. “Remember where I was working when you first met me?”

“That’s different, you were brainwashed.” He scrubs a hand over his eyes, reaching for the words. “You didn’t choose it.”

“Neither did she.”

“Still,” he says, uncertainty playing over his features. “This _feels_ different somehow, I don’t know.”

They don’t discuss it again. Poe shrugging it off as if nothing has altered. But Rey can see the change in him. He struggles not to show it but there is something new in his eyes when he looks at her. A wariness. A distrust she can’t blame him for harbouring.

She has kept this from them.

From everyone.

She thinks again of the love she might've found if things had been different. The sweetness of Finn, the excitement of Poe, anything but the darkness she's fallen into.

There are no options now, she knows it without shadow of a doubt, it is Ren or nothing. Right now she‘s leaning towards nothing.

 

-

 

It is General Organa’s reaction she fears most.

She could take hatred from anyone else, but not from her.

Rey knows all too well the pain Leia has endured, the hurt inflicted on her by the ones supposed to love her best. The loss of her son, the abandonment of her brother and then her husband when she needed them most. She alone has shouldered the fate of their galaxy, emerging from the crucible stronger and more capable. Only to have fate once more cut her down. Taking more and more until Rey can hardly think how she’s still standing, never mind running the resistance practically single handedly.

And now Rey has caused her yet more harm.

She wants to retreat to her bunk, bury her face in the sheets and sleep until she is forgotten. To borrow one of the old shuttles at the back of the shipyard and fly as fast and as far away as she can.

But she cannot be a coward, not now.

She stands awkwardly, shifting from foot to foot outside the Generals door. Preparing herself for whatever might happen next. If she is sent away she will go willingly, if she is court-martialed she will not protest.

Leia greets her with open arms.

“I am so sorry Rey.” The older woman says, engulfing her in the kind of motherly hug Rey has only ever seen on holovids before. It shines into all of the darkest places in her soul. “Truly.”

“S-sorry?” Rey stammers. Face prickling with heat as she fights to comprehend what is happening. She’d been prepared for anger, for sorrow, for pure hatred but the kindness in Leia’s face undoes her.

“I thought- I suspected maybe-” It is the first time she has ever heard the General lost for words. She takes Rey’s face between her hands. “This must have been so hard for you. A burden you should never have had to face, especially not alone. I'm sorry.”

Rey had thought she had used up all her tears, done with shedding saltwater for the rest of her days. She had learnt early that crying was not a luxury she could afford in the desert. But something about this makes her eyes water once more.

“I can’t save him.” She doesn’t know what prompts her to say it, voice wavering. The thought has been weighing her down for days. It's like wading through mud, waist high and getting deeper as the situation becomes more and more real to her.

She finds herself longing, more than anything, to be Ren’s salvation. Not for his sake, but for Leia’s. If she could resurrect the General’s long dead son she would do so in a heartbeat. She would fight the galaxy, tear apart time with her bare hands, anything if it meant she could return even that little light to her.

But she can’t.

“Of course you can't.” Leia’s hands drop to her shoulders, clutching at her. “And you must never think you could. It doesn't work that way.” Her face falls as she says it, echoes of past attempts flickering across her features in a show of despair. It is clear to all of them now that it is no longer an option. “Only he can make that choice.”

Rey nods, dashing back the tears before they can fall and forcing her face into neutrality. Leia deserves her bravery, her strength.

“If you could talk to him though. When you’re ready. Some good may come of this yet.” She gives her a half smile that can’t quite overcome the sadness in her eyes. “He may know the First Orders plans.”

“Why aren’t we interrogating him…” She can’t help but ask, everyone has wondered. “I mean, _properly_ interrogating him?”

Leia smiles again, more of the General than the Mother in _this_ smile. “He isn’t afraid of torture, Rey. Pain is a way of life for him now. He is afraid of kindness, he sees it as a weakness still. So we shall, as the saying goes, kill him with it.”

Rey firms her jaw. She would willingly walk through hell for this woman if she asked.

She can certainly spend some quality time with her homicidal son for her.

 

-

Kylo cannot believe how quickly she returns to him. Expecting her to be absent for days, weeks even, needing time to deal with the fallout of what has come to pass. Patience has never been his strong suit, but for her, he is prepared to wait. They will coax her back to him eventually. They will want his secrets after all, the things he knows of the First Order, and they will know she is the only one who stands a chance of getting them.

So, when she shows up with the others for his afternoon interrogation, he can barely restrain his surprise.

He has been toying with the idea of escape since he awoke in their captivity. Even with his powers dampened he has seen at least half a dozen ways in which he could make it past the guards. But escape isn’t his end-game, not without her. She will need to be convinced, coerced even, into joining him. That will take time. Still, he hadn’t thought to have the chance to begin so soon.

No one is mentioning the obvious. The blue stain still gleaming around her eye. It suits her beautifully, but then blue has always been her colour. Like red is his.

They are perfect opposites, equals, and for now he is content with their waiting game.

Their pitiful attempts at interrogation have drawn nothing from him but his contempt, but if she is present he will deign to give them the barest slivers of information. Tiny, useless details that will only serve to help them chase their tails.

Only serve to draw her nearer.

 

-

 

It has been four days since her secret was revealed, and he is _still_ playing with them.

For all of his stoicism and sneers she can see the mischief dancing in his eyes. The gleeful darkness that lights up his face whenever they try to press him into answers. The only time he ever seems wary is when his mother is present, a distance forms then. A veneer he thinks no one else will see.

It takes everything she has to keep herself impassive. She wants to strike out at him for what he’s done to her, to beat some sense into him for what he’s done to the others. And then there are the other thoughts too. The way he draws down on the full swell of his lip when he’s trying not to smirk, the breadth of his shoulders, the depth of his black eyes. It sparks memories of the time before and dark hopes of the future it takes everything in her to keep from showing.

He affects her still, and she will not let him know it.

It’s late though, and she is done with his nonsense for the day. Ready to scrub herself clean of his gaze and curl up in her quarters until sleep takes her.

She’s pulling her shirt over her head when she sees it. Blue is exploding over her skin like fireworks, up her arms, across her chest and neck, dark, sudden bursts blossoming across her face until she is a patchwork of mottled cerulean.

They’re beating him. Against orders.

A white heat grips her, an unbridled fury that leaves her breathless as she drags her shirt back on and runs from the room. Her legs are screaming with the sudden exertion, muscles working overtime as she crosses the compound in record time, hair streaming behind her in the night breeze.

She cannot feel the cold.

The doors burst open with a flick of her eyes, thunder etched on her brow as the guards tasked with watching the prisoner turn to her as one. They have left their posts, the stun field down and the cage door still ajar as they surround their charge. He is chained up tighter than usual this night. Helpless. They are afraid he will fight back.

Rey sneers, they do not yet know fear.

The guards, cower back at the mere sight of her.

From his position, prone and bruised on the floor, Ren smiles at her, only it’s dazedly. Not quite connected.

She sees a syringe on the floor just outside the cell.

They’ve drugged him too.

Hatred fills her.The darkness in her belly rises up until it’s swallowing her whole, until she feels like she might choke on it.

It doesn’t matter what he’s done before, or is yet to do, this is cowardice, _brutality_ , at it’s finest.

They have rendered him completely helpless, unable to so much as struggle, and beaten him until their knuckles bleed. This isn’t justice, it’s abuse.

“What do you think you are doing?” The full weight of her gaze pins the three men with bloody fists in place.

The nearest guard’s jaw unslackens as he remembers why they’re there. He straightens up, shoulders shoved back arrogantly as he kicks the figure at their feet. “We’re tucking the prisoner in, miss.”

“Under whose authority?” The power crackles around her, filling the air with static electricity. Even on the edge of the Ysalamir’s bubble the force of it is impressive. Undampened and alive. The tempest of her emotions is growing, a storm of power that she stands unmoving in the eye of. It’s almost intoxicating. _Vital._

“Mine.” The leader sniffs, stomping over to her even as his comrades hang back eyeing her warily. Their sense of self preservation more well honed than that of their foolhardy friend. “The First Order killed a lot of my friends, _girl_.”

“We are not playing that game, Red Sixteen.” She spits his rank, “This is the Resistance. We don’t play an eye for an eye here. He has information we need.”

“You would say that.” The other two have slipped loose from the cell, backs to the wall as they edge towards her. Towards the door. Red Sixteen is not so clever, he is in her face now, eyeing the colours on her skin. “We all know what those little _love marks_ mean.”

For a second she thinks she might strike. Unspent anger roaring up from the pit of her stomach like a flock of mynochs, razor sharp and vicious. She is anger personified and she could crush this pitiful man with a thought if she wanted to. She lifts her hand towards him, fingers curling as she reaches effortless for her powers. Red Sixteen jerks, face reddening as the air in his lungs deserts him. She flexes her invisible grip around his throat.

She catches Ren’s eye, glittering with excitement even through the haze of pain and paralysis, and the realization of what she’s doing hits her hard. She drops her hand like she’s been burnt, shame rushing in as the anger ebbs. Red falls away, gasping in horror.

She will not give into her hate. Not in front of _him._

“Dismissed.” She barks. They scatter, the two more sensible colleges dragging the third away before she can change her mind.

They’ve seen what she can do, and they’re right to be frightened.

But not as frightened as she is.

She has felt the darkness now. Truly felt it.

And it felt good. Easy. Power unlike anything she’s ever felt before rising effortlessly at her call, filling every part of her until she seemed invincible.

She wonders if this is how Ren feels all the time. For a moment she can almost understand him.

Crushing the thought she crosses the room in quick, sharp steps, welcoming the sudden loss of her powers. The cool wash of disconnection clearing some of the rage from her head.

She pauses before him, she hasn’t touched him since the forest and is hesitant to now. Afraid of how it will make her feel. But even though he’s still smiling at her she can see the pain clouding his features.

“Anything broken?” She asks at last, kneeling beside him and running her hands over the corded muscles in his arms. Her head is spinning with what has almost come to pass, tilting on the edge of an abyss she’s not sure she could return from.

“How did it feel?” He asks in reply, gazing at her like she’s the stars. She looks away, the exultation in his voice unsettling her even more than the words. He is struggling against the steel and sedation, managing to lift one pale fingered hand enough to cover hers. His touch startles her. It feels different now, more than before. Makes her world narrow down to the places where his skin meets hers. She darts back, swallowing hard.

Nothing is broken, they were brutal but unskilled. He will hurt in the morning but it is nothing that time won’t heal.

“I don’t know what you mean.” She rises shakily to her feet, locking the cell quickly behind her and slamming the stun-field back on. She’ll find the night commander and see that new guards are assigned to him, and a med-droid dispatched if necessary.

She pauses at the door, looking back uncertainly.

“I didn’t do it for you.” She feels like she has to say it. Like the words need to be spoken aloud. To assert the fact that she would have done the same if she had come across anyone in his situation.

It feels like a lie. And from his face as he watches her departure she is sure he knows it too.

 

 


	6. Medium

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Actions have consequences, and Rey must live with hers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The usual undying thanks to my better beta Rellie for everything! She is a magical word unicorn in people clothes!  
> Also a massive thank you to everyone who's been commenting & kudoing and everything so far - your comments mean the world to me (and are the best motivation I know!) :D

 

The fear of what she almost did gnaws at her.

A constant heavy weight at the back of her mind, shadowing everything she does.

Word spreads. It always does. Before long everyone seems to know, not only of the marks, but of her little _incident_ in the hangar. The story grows and embellishes over the tellings until, three days later, she’s hearing that she force-threw a half dozen guards through a window before setting fire to a T-16 with her eyes. She sighs, pulling Finn back by the collar as he goes to correct them.

“It’s not worth it.”

The only people who have bothered to learn the truth are those closest to her, but she knows it’s worrying them too. No matter how much she underplays it. A new line of tension has formed between the General’s eyes, one that speaks of an old fear made new again.

Another ward tilting towards the dark.

Rey wants to grab her hand and promise her she won’t go there again, that she’ll never touch the darkness she’s found growing in her. But she can’t. She doesn’t know it for certain after all, and she refuses to lie to Leia again.

A week passes and Poe and Finn are called away, chasing the half-leads Ren has given them. The hushed whispers that follow her grow louder in their absence. She finds that nowhere feels safe anymore. Not the work shop or the mess hall or even the haulage yard. She is never free from the looks, they dog her with every step. A second shadow, reminding her of the line she crossed. Of what she almost became. She’s exhausted.

There is only _one_ place they fear to tread. One escape left to her.

And she is loath to use it.

The guards fix their gazes straight ahead as she approaches, stiffening at the sight of her. Five foot seven, covered in engine oil and terrifying to them. They look anywhere other than her as she slips through the hangar doors. She ignores them, welcoming the sudden hush. She won’t be disturbed here.

“You’re back.”

Well, she won’t be disturbed by anyone else at least. And anyway, Kylo Ren can disturb her from thousand light years away. So what’s the difference, really?

He has seen her worst now, at least he doesn’t judge her for it like the others. She wants to laugh at the thought, he _can’t_ judge her for it. He’s spent his life forming himself into darkness made flesh, to him she must seem little more than a rank amateur. She wants to blame him for it anyway, as she has blamed him for so much else. But she can’t.

This darkness is hers and hers alone.

She’s discharged Jen Yu from dinner duty, taking the tray herself. She drops it in front of his cell silently, lowering the stun-field just long enough to kick it through the gap.

Duty done she turns her back on him, his presence remaining as jarring as ever. She feels it like a breeze over her skin, like she’s been trapped inside for weeks and has only just tasted fresh air again. She’s suddenly back in the desert, emerging from her hovel after an endless sand storm. The sunlight glaring off the dunes and blinding her. It’s a feeling she can never forget, the freedom of the plains before her. This feels like that. Like the breathless moment after take off in a freshly fixed-up ship, not sure if she’s going crash or soar.

And it’s scaring her too.

Even dulled as it is by the cool weight of the Ysalamir’s bubble, the connection is strong enough that she has to remind herself to keep her breathing steady, to keep her gaze flat and emotionless. To not believe in the false security offered by the bars that separate them.

 _He is dangerous_ . She tells herself. _A caged beast is a beast still._

Finding a patch of floor she likes the look of she folds her legs underneath her, leaning back against the cold concrete wall so she can ignore him from a safe distance. She knows he’s watching her as she slows her breathing and tries to find that clear place in her head Master Luke always talked about, but she finds she doesn’t care. One pair of eyes is far preferable to a dozen.

He lets her have her silence.

 

- 

 

After that first visit she takes over dinner duty entirely, Jen is more than happy to give it up. It becomes easier to be near him, she no longer jumps at every movement or flinches from his gaze. She finds a safety beyond the bars she wasn’t sure was left to her, and when she closes her eyes she can almost pretend she’s home. Not that she knows where that is anymore.

“It’s a little late to be visiting your captive.” He says when she appears on the fourth day, leaning against the bars. Waiting for her. The chains are gone today, it is long past their usual hour, the sun already sunk far beyond on the horizon.

“Captive?” The word takes her back as she crouches to place the tray by his feet. Her mind flashing to the time when their situations were reversed, a lifetime ago now, when neither knew who the other truly was. She straightens up slowly, she hasn’t let herself get this close to him since the _incident_ but she’s feeling reckless.

The day has been long and hard, hours of work fixing a cracked hyperdrive have stolen the strength from her muscles. The work made worse by the isolation. With her friends gone and Leia busy she has grown lonely again. It’s somehow worse than it ever was back on Jakku, at least there she could be alone. Here she is surrounded by people who watch her like she might snap at any moment, afraid to even hand her a socket wrench.

She gazes at him through the bars, having to tilt her head back to meet his eyes. He’s still so ridiculously tall. The angles of his face have grown more pronounced than ever, he is thinner than she remembers him being. But he is just as desperately alive. Something she can’t name dances behind his eyes. Almost like he’s glad to see her.

She raises her brow at him as she steps back at last, “You’re my _guest._ ”

“Hmm.” His lips twitch in the first real smile she thinks she’s ever seen him wear. Not a smirk, or a sneer, but a true smile. It suits him. “Your hospitality leaves a lot to be desired.”

She scoffs at that, trying to ignore the sudden hitch in her heartbeat as she turns away and finds her seat on the floor, closer than usual today. It wouldn’t do to have the guards eavesdrop on them after all. There are enough rumours already. “At least I haven’t strapped you to a cold metal chair and tried to jail-break my way into your innermost thoughts.”

She can’t even be properly bitter about it anymore, it was too long ago, less than a memory now. Too much has changed.

He shrugs, folding himself down to sit opposite her behind the bars. “You wouldn’t have told me what I wanted to know willingly.”

She lets out an indignant little huff of laughter. “Of course not.”

“Then what do you expect.” He tilts his head at her consideringly. “You’re more than welcome to try to,” he pauses to suppress a smirk, “‘ _jail-break_ ’ your way into my mind though. If you want. You’d have to get rid of these… creatures of course.”

He gestures to the Ysalamir.

“No thank you.” She sniffs, leaning her face against the wall. The cold touch of stone soothing her frazzled nerves. “I’ve been in your mind before remember, and I really don’t fancy a return trip.”

He laughs, the sound unexpectedly low and knowing, pooling deep in her stomach. A sudden heat sweeps across her skin as he leans towards her again, eyes sinking into hers. It’s moments like this she finds haunting her dreams most often, nightmares of their fights fading to a memory as a new kind of fear grips her sleep. Fear of something she must still deny she wants.

“Are you sure?” He asks, as if he can see her thoughts and already knows the answer.

Feeling the warmth rising in her face she clears her throat too-loudly, changing the conversation. “So - anyone kicked the living hell out of you today?”

“Not yet.” His eyes leave hers at last, tracing the exposed line of flesh at her throat and shoulders. She can feel it like a caress, sending a dark little shiver through her. “Although you know that. Who would dare touch me with such a fearsome protector.”

“Shut up.” She rolls her eyes at him and he laughs again, the sound lighter this time. Less… sultry. She’s glad of it, her nerves can only take so much.

“You’re still not a Jedi then.” It’s more of a statement than anything else, and far from sounding judgemental he almost sounds… pleased.

“No more than you are a Sith, ‘ _Lord Ren_.’” She replies cattily, hands wrapped tight around her legs. He stiffens for a second before giving a wry smile, taking up the plastic utensil and picking at the tray she’s brought. A silent acquiescence that they are neither what they aspired to be.

Tension released she gazes at him from under her eyelashes, her turn to watch now. They are two of a kind it seems. Neither Jedi, nor Sith. Children playing with powers beyond their imaginations. She cycles through his faces again. Kylo, Ben, Ren. She wonders where this current incarnation of him fits in the wheel.

He has become almost human in the passing days, now more so than ever as he grimaces at the lacklustre provisions of the Resistance canteen. Swiping a hand through hair that has grown too long for him. She can’t look away.

“So.” He asks her, startling her from her reverie. She closes her mouth with a snap and focuses her eyes on his again. “Why are you here Rey?”

“Huh?” She’s not sure if he’s ever said her name before, not entirely sure that he even knew it. She has been ‘ _the girl_ ’ for so long that the name sounds strange to her on his tongue. The smooth, measured cadence of his voice turning it into something unfamiliar. Heart jumping wildly in her suddenly dry throat she nods to the tray, “I’m on dinner duty.”

He lifts his brows at that, and for a moment it’s almost as if he can see right through her to the wall behind. “No. Why are you _really_ here?”

She looks away, unable to tell him the truth.

She can’t possibly tell the prisoner in their cell, the one who has maimed and killed her friends, who seeks still to rule the galaxy with a darkness she has only flirted with, who embodies all the stand against, that she’s here because she’s lonely. That she’s hurting after everything that’s happened and he has become the only place where she feels like she can breathe again.

She is Rey of the desert and she has never needed anyone in her entire life. She has fed herself, protected herself, cared for herself alone since she could walk.

And yet his presence is starting to become the only thing that can make her feel _right_ anymore.

“It’s late.” She climbs to her feet, unable to meet his gaze as she smooths her jacket back into place. “I should go.”

She doesn’t look back, doesn’t let herself.

 

When she returns the next day he doesn’t mention it, she’s glad.

 

-  


Everything has been black and white. Always. For as long as he can remember. Lightness and darkness, weakness and strength. Only recently, so slowly he has barely noticed the change, things have started to look more… varied. Greyness forming and flickering where there was only the dichotomy before.

She has started to come to him willingly now.

First when the cowardice of the guards had left him drugged, chained and beaten. It was a humiliation that would normally send fire into his blood, a rage so deep that he would not rest until all and everything involved were burnt and buried. But then she appeared and eclipsed it all. Even through the bubble he could feel her power, so strong, so pure it seemed to spark off her in waves. The raw force of her filling the air until she’d stolen every last breath from him.

Even bruised and beaten, he wants to press her. To hear how it felt from her own lips, that first intoxicating lick of true power. To push past the chains and taste her again, feel the darkness in her kiss. To draw her out, teach her every dark trick he knows until she’s wreathed in it.

Then she returns again. Day after day under the pretence of bringing him meals, the guilt of what she’s touched shadowing her features. The desire that consumes him turns to worry. Each day her shoulders have dropped just a little more as she slips through the hangar doors. Straightening up as soon as she passes the threshold, her stubborn mask back in place. He can still feel it though, The change in her. The sudden weight of isolation.

This is what he wanted. To drive her from the others, to bring her to his side in the shadows. The satisfaction should be tangible, but it fritters away when he sees the circles that have formed under her eyes. The disconnection twists at his innards. No marks have formed on his skin from it but he knows it’s hurting her.

Loneliness is an old companion and he recognizes it in every line of her form. Slivers of memory surface, flashes of the boy he’d been, the boy he killed. How it felt to be _other_ in a place where he was supposed to fit in. The isolation of his name. It angers him to see her like this, to see her ostracised. Not now, when they need never be alone again. 

He finds himself restless, agitated. Needing to comfort her in some way and not knowing how. It’s unsettling. A gentleness he has not seen in himself in a long time. The spaces in his mind that have always been reserved for darkness are suddenly in flux again.

He has been too long without his powers. Cut off for weeks from Leader Snoke’s grip. Without his voice in his head he is struggling. The weakness that has festered in him from his infancy has found new life, stretching and bending towards her light like a flower starved of the sun. He knows this is wrong, his legacy is one of power. One of total control. Like his grandfather’s. But without the connection to the force he finds the idea harder and harder to grasp, it slips through his fingers every time he looks at her. Replaced only with the need to be with her, to be _valued_ in her eyes.

His self-hatred thrives in the hours they are parted. Thoughts that were once so easily quashed by the cloak of his powers have nowhere to go. There is nothing to silence them now. Nothing to stop the slide show of atrocities he's committed from playing behind his eyes when he is left too long alone. He has begun to wonder how he seems to her, pitiless or pitiful. Which would be worse?  

And yet still her presence has become his only respite from himself.

He thinks again of escaping his cell, of snatching her up and taking her as far away from this cursed planet as he can. But what then? He knows he should bring her to Snoke. It is his Master’s will, and he has never defied him. But then he thinks of Snoke invading her mind, moulding it like he moulded his, and it suddenly sits strangely with him.

She is his. _Only his_.

Of all of his plans he considers there is one he knows for fact will succeed. The easiest. All he has to do is capitulate, tell them what they wish to hear. That he has embraced good once more. Fall onto his knees before his mother and beg her forgiveness. Sob, and keen and wail over the things he has done. Stretch his hands to Rey and promise her that he will live in the light with her.

It is one plan, however, that he will never use.

He is afraid, more afraid than he has ever been before, that if he starts this act he will not be able to stop. That he will not want too.

Her lightness seems contagious, even as she stumbles into the dark.

 

“I know why you keep coming back.” He says on her fifth, sixth, seventh evening with him. Each day she moves closer to his cell until soon he could almost touch her if the stun field would let him. Reach right through the bar and brush the soot from her face.

“Oh really?” She rolls her eyes but he can see the little flutter in her throat as she swallows hard. It’s pleasing to know he still has that effect on her, a swell of male pride that bolsters his ego as the colour rises in her cheeks.

“It’s obvious.” He runs his hand over the pitted metal bars that lie between them, wishing the light were better so he could more firmly commit each of her varied expressions to memory. “We’re meant to be together.”

He expects the sentence to shock her. To provoke her into some reaction. She has been too quiet this evening, the sadness taking a heavy drain on her that he cannot stand to see. He would take her anger over this, her hatred even.

Instead she only sighs, dropping her head back against the wall. “So what?” She asks, looking up at him with those endless hazel eyes. “So what if we are? We’re already lost. I have no intention of joining you on the darkside, and you won’t come back to the light. So is this going to be it? Is this going to be all it ever is? Are we going to spend our _whole lives_ trying to push each other into being something we don’t want to be?”

He is rendered speechless at this apathetic acceptance of their roles. She isn’t fighting it anymore, instead she seems almost defeated by it. It won’t do at all. This slow erosion of her confidence is a travesty.

“It could be interesting.” He appraises her anew, wanting again to reach through the bars. He would give anything to touch her right now. To stoke the fire he knows still burns in her. “Although you really should consider the power of the dark side, my offer stands. I could teach you.”

“Thanks but no thanks.” She kicks the toe of her boot out, bouncing harmlessly off the stun field. “Anyway, trying to stab each other in forests is hardly a healthy basis for a relationship.”

 _Relationship_. The word has his heart jumping in his chest, it tugs at some strange primal part of him he has yet to acknowledge. He runs a hand over his face, the motion reawakening the half-healed injuries from his beating. For a second blue dances over her features, it’s beautiful.

“So, you won’t even try to save me.” He muses at last, a quiet indifference betrayed by the blood that’s roaring in his ears. He has been wondering why she hasn’t tried yet, hasn’t pried him for his secrets or expounded the glories of the light. Like Luke had. Like his parents had.

Why she hasn’t begged him to give in to it’s pull.

“No.” She shrugs, suddenly fascinated by her hands. “I can’t do that. No one can do that.”

“I’m never going to be-” The name sticks on his tongue, and he wonders where this sudden need to skin himself in front of her has come from. To lay himself bare before her. “Ben Solo doesn’t exist anymore.”

She looks at him like he’s an idiot, and for a second he feels like one. Stunned into silence by a pretty girl. Then he remembers who he is and straightens his shoulders under her gaze.

“Of course you’re not going to be the person you were fifteen years ago.” She’s saying, the fire returning at last to her eyes. “Or twenty. Or ten. Or one. The only thing you get to decide is who you’re going to be next.” She rises to her feet, joints protesting after sitting so long on the cold floor. “I hope for your sake he’s not a total asshole.”


	7. Sapphire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Blue Misunderstandings. Grey Realizations.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The hugest of huge thanks to Rellsbear as usual for being so much more than a beta! :-D  
> And a massive thank you to everyone who has read this story so far! I can't tell you how much your comments mean to me!

 

Considering how much her world has changed, Rey is amazed at much it seems to have remained the same.

She’s up to her elbows in hydraulic fluid, the Resistance has somehow managed to get its hands on a busted up HWK-290 light freighter and Rey has taken it upon herself to get it running again. The back of the ship is missing completely, leaving her balancing on the engine block high above the hangar floor. The mag-shielding has stripped away to nothing, exposing the fuel lines and fuses to the open air. It’s a difficult fix, but not impossible.

It’s all too easy for her thoughts to slip away without her permission as she moves easily across the heated metal, safety harness forgotten as she falls back into the old pattern of fixing things. She rewires the carbon fuses on autopilot, her mind drifting into daydreams of other lives, ones she might’ve led if things had been different.

She’s back on Takodana, trees stretching up to the sky as the floor trembles with the battle that’s taking place around her. She imagines meeting Ren there, only this time he’s not there to stop them, but to save them. He appears scowling from the trees in resistance colours, effortlessly striking down the oncoming storm troopers, a scarf pulled up close around his face.

“I was handling it.” She’d shout at him, fighting side by side through the enemy forces.

When he recognizes her abilities it’s not darkness he offers, but help.

 _You need a teacher._ Her heart thumps at the words in a different world, of the possibilities they could have offered.

The wire cutter slips from her hand, bouncing off the hydro-tank before making the long fall to the ground. Her stomach drops with it. The crash below heralds the return of reality, that was never the life for them.

Dragging herself up the fuel block she reaches for her kit, and, spare cutters found, she settles back to work. Their path has always been shadowed.

She sees another world, one where the cruelties of the desert have made her harder than she was before. He finds her before the resistance does, a dark saviour offering her the tools of her revenge against an unjust world. She imagines the heady passion of a life like that, moving through the galaxy feared and fearless. Lost to the intoxicating power of the dark side.

She shivers despite the heat of the hangar, sweat trickling down her spine from the day's efforts. The temptation is real, sitting deep in her belly and teasing her with how easy it could be. She will never bend to it. Not now.

The R4 unit she’s left fixing up the external drives chirrups and she sighs, her thoughts are becoming enemies inside her own head. A vicious circle that saps the energy from her bones, a litany of ‘what ifs’ that can do nothing but tire her now. Vaulting up to the top of the block she slides her tools back into their bag, dropping them down the wire to the ground below. The rest can wait.

The thoughts follow her as she begins her descent. It won’t be long until she can see him again, the clock ticking closer and closer to dinnertime. Her heart already beginning to race at the prospect of it.

It no longer seems to matter that they are once more separated by a gaping chasm, the world falling away between them until they are trapped on opposite sides. Light and Dark. For this one moment she doesn’t care. For all of the nightmares and daydreams, she finds that she just wants to see him again. Sit near to his dry humour and bitterness and forget for a while.

She reaches for the next hand hold, not realizing her grip is compromised until it’s too late. The plastic fusing has loosened in the heat, hanging on by a thread. Her weight snaps it clean in two, the sudden loss jerking her oil slicked hands free from the casing. Before she can blink she’s hurtling like a rock to the ground below.  


-

 

He paces the cell.

She hasn’t been this late in weeks.

He needs to see her, talk to her. For so long he has been told what he should be. Lightness and dark, his path has been laid out before him by others. She is the only one to place the onus on him and he can’t stop thinking about it. About who he is, who he could be. He will never be light, he knows in his bones that that ship has sailed, but maybe there is something in between. Some twilight place between their worlds where they might meet.

But she is not here.

Something has happened. A faceless drone in the orange jumpsuit interrupts him, hurling the tray through the bars without a second look.  Something is wrong. Terribly wrong.

His fingers tremble as he scrabbles at his sleeves, heart clenching in fear over what he might find there. Sapphire paints his skin in swathes. He tears at the hem of his undershirt, all across his abdomen, up his sides and chest. Blue. Blue. Blue.

“Guard.” He shouts, voice catching pathetically as he hurls himself at the cell bars. “Guard!”

“What?” The man sticks his head around the door, his gaze is scornful but he stinks of fear. Ren scans the edges of his cage, looking for a release. He has to get to her. Has to. _Has to._ The need becomes a chant, thundering in his ears with the sound of his heartbeat. He has not tasted desperation like this in a long time.

“Release me.”

It is so much worse than before, when he knew she was injured and yet had no way of finding her. Now he knows exactly where she is, so close he could be with her in a second, and he’s trapped. Helpless and confined whilst she suffers. He is useless. Pathetic. And she is hurting.

“No… ?” It’s almost a question, the fat man’s face becoming even denser in incomprehension as he hovers in the doorway.

“You have to release me.” He struggles, relying on others is a weakness and he cannot abide it. Biting the words out between clenched teeth as he presses closer and closer to the bars until he can feel the stun-field sizzling beside his skin. “She’s been injured. I have to _find_ her.” His voice is low fury and fire, the whine of an injured predator about to strike. If he had his powers he would make the planet tremble. “ _Now._ ”

The man looks at him blankly for a moment that seems to stretch into hours, then he vanishes from sight.

Ren roars, the full force of his fury seizing hold of him as he lashes out blindly at his confines, wrapping his hands around the metal chair and forcing it into the bars. Sparks fly wildly as it bounces off the stun field. Again and again he strikes, there’s a conduit on the corner wall, one that controls the field’s range, he targets it with a single-minded precision. He _will_ get to her. He has to.

Others enter but he is so blinded by fear and anger he cannot tell one face from another, he has become a creature of raw feeling. Desperation clawing up from his gut and ripping into his mind until all he can see is _her_.

_“Ma’am we’ll have to sedate him.”_

Rey’s ice pale face under the fluorescents, skin and hair slick with patches of crimson. It circles her like a halo.

_“Not yet.”_

She looks at him with lifeless hazel eyes, a silent accusation. _Why didn’t you save me?_

 _“Ben-”_ The voices come through water to him, familiar but not as the chair splinters in his hands, still using one severed leg to beat against the conduit as the stun field flickers, cast iron casing denting under his onslaught. He cannot feel the cuts that cover his hands, bruises already ripening as blood flows freely down his arms. Painting the grey concrete red.

“ _Ben._ _We have Rey.”_ The shout draws him up short, panting as he tries to focus on the source. The adrenaline pounds through his veins, filling his head with static until he doesn’t care that they’re using the wrong name. “She’s in the med bay. She’ll be... fine.”

“I have to see her.” He starts forward, the broken chair falling to the floor with a crash. His fingers slip against the bars as he focuses in on his mother, there is fear in her eyes. Only it is not of him, it’s for Rey. He sucks air into lungs that have shrunk inside his ribcage, making it suddenly impossible to breath. He looks at the woman who gave him life, whose pain he has caused so much of, and forgets everything that has transpired between them through the years. Imploring her with his eyes. Begging her to understand.

Leia nods, uncertainly, and for a moment his heart leaps. Soaring and spiralling out of him in a rush of relief. He can see her.

“As soon as she’s able.”

“No.” The relief is crushed, anger flowing back in like the tide. “No. It’s not good enough. I must see her _now.”_

“I’m sorry, Ben.” She sounds like she means it, the words soft and pitiful but he doesn’t care. If he could he would reach out and strike them all down. Strike down everyone in his path to get to her side.

Through the noise in his skull he hears someone shouting, only later realizing it’s him.

 

-  


Everything aches.

_Everything._

She struggles to open her eyes against the bright-white light of the med-bay, the intensity of it stabbing through her retinas directly into her brain. Her limbs are leaden, skin damp and tingly. They’ve stuck her in the bacta tank. She can tell. The aftereffects of the medi-droid’s work are still not enough to block out the residual dull pain though.

“What happened?” She groans as the General’s face swims into view, she wonders for a moment why Finn isn’t beside her before she remembers his mission.

“You fell off an engine block.” Leia half-smiles, face tight with worry and something that might just be exasperation.

“Oh yeah.” The fuzziness clears and she remembers the feel of the plastic fusing under her hand, the sudden crack as it broke and the free fall that followed. “Well, that was stupid of me.”

The memory shudders through her, and she’s glad at least that she can’t remember the impact. Dragging herself upright she winces at the sudden wave of nausea that hits her. Forcing herself to take shallow breaths as she assess the damage as if she were running diagnostics on a ship. Her left arm had broken, the ghost of three cracked ribs straining her breath, leg sprained. Possible concussion.

She sighs, the med-droids had set the breaks, the bacta knitting the bones together and soothing the strained muscles. It would still take a day or two before she would be back on peak form though, in the meantime she’d ache like she’d run from the Outpost to the Shard in the midday sun.

“You gave us all a fright,” Leia says, checking her over for any damage the medi-droids might have missed with worry creasing her brow. “Alliavan nearly fainted when he found you.”

“I’ve fallen off bigger things,” Rey jokes weakly, lifting a hand to push her hair from her eyes. “Takes more than that to kill me.”

Catching sight of her arms she feels her blood run cold. It’s not the bruises blooming across her skin, or the half-healed bones that stop her breath though.

It’s the blue.

She’s covered in it, hands and arms and shoulders. Turning red skin purple under the bright lights. She looks across at Leia’s face, heart in her throat at the pallor she now sees there. The circles forming under her eyes.

“Ren?” She asks, voice suddenly tight in her throat.

“He- there was a bit of an… incident.” The General hesitates over the words.

“I have to see him.” She throws back the sheets, pushing her tired limbs into doing her bidding as she swings her legs over the edge of the bed.

“You need to rest-” It’s half-hearted, Leia reaching out to stop her as she pulls herself away. Snagging the neat bundle of clothes from the side, Rey disappears behind the partition. Arms aching as she tugs at the neck of her standard-issue medi-gown.

Staggering out, rumpled but decent she plants her feet as firmly as she’s able.

“Help me or move.”

Leia opens her mouth to protest before snapping it shut again, shaking her head she threads her arm under her charge’s shoulders. Surrounded by stubborn children.

“Come on then.”

Every slow step across the darkening complex has Rey’s heart beating faster, crashing like a bull rancor against her ribs as her mind flashes back to the memory of him bleeding and beaten on the cell floor. What if it’s worse this time? What if she’s too late?

The thoughts are vicious, insistent and unending as she tries to push faster than her body will allow. By the time they make it to the hangar she can taste bitter adrenaline in her mouth.

She doesn’t see him at first. The slumped form kneeling just behind the bars, but then he looks up. White face glowing in the half light. His eyes widen at the sight of her and he’s leaping to his feet.

She goes to him without thinking, breaking free of Leia’s comforting grip and hurling herself towards the cage. He’s pale, so so pale. And when he lifts his hands to reach for her she can see they’re dark with dried blood.

“ _What did you do you idiot_?” She half shouts at him, not noticing as Leia switches down the stun field and ushers the others away. Too consumed with the bruised and bloodied creature in front of her. “What in Rii’a’s name did you do to yourself?”

“Me?” He hurls back, bristling with indignation even as he reaches through the bars to catch her. Cradling her face between his hands and examining the bruises that spread down from her jaw. His touch is tender, a stark contrast to the barely restrained fury in his voice. “What the hell did you do?”

“I-” She blushes angrily, humiliated at the stupidity of her accident. She pulls one of his hands away from her neck, holding it flat so she can better examine the jagged cuts that criss cross his palms. They have gone untreated entirely, something that only stokes her anger. Staring at them she mutters. “I fell off the engine block of HWK-290.”

“You what?!” The disbelief is tangible, horror flashing in his black eyes. He renews his efforts, long fingers trailing sparks across her skin as he catalogues her bruises.

“Well what about you?” She bridles, vexed by him even as his gentle touch sends her blood fizzing. She runs her thumb along to the worst of the cuts and he winces. “Did you trip over and stick your hands into a _garbage crusher_?”

“It’s nothing.” He scowls, lips tightening into something she would have called a pout on anyone else’s face. Sulking.

“It’s _not_ nothing.” She turns to search for a medkit but he catches her arm before she can take more than step away, holding her back silently. She halts, startled by the sudden softness in his face, the raw fear there. As if he’s asking her not to leave. “We need to clean them.” She says, anger dropping entirely from her voice.

He looks at her, weariness and desperation showing behind guarded features. She realizes what it looks like and her heart stutters, he’s vulnerable.

Words fail her. She takes a step back towards him, silently. _I won’t leave._ The relief in his face is immediate, still holding tightly to her good arm as they stand there separated by the bars.

“How did this happen?” She asks quietly, aware of the sudden hush in the hangar now her heart has stopped trying to jump out of her mouth. She takes his hand back, lifting it between them. He doesn’t want to tell her. She can read it clearly in the frown line that has formed between his eyes, looking away almost petulantly. “ _Ren_?”

The use of his name has him looking up at last. “You were hurt.” He says, voice stilted and deceptively calm. “I couldn’t get to you.”

Everything stills. Time itself crawling to a halt as she looks up at him, every line and freckle tattooing itself into her memory. This is it, she realizes suddenly. This is the moment she can never go back from.

She feels the warmth of his skin under hers, the grip on her arm gentling to something hesitant, tender. She pulls at his hand, tugging him with her as she slumps down to sit beside the cage. Giving in to her aching muscles at last. He follows silently, hand still wrapped tightly around hers. She runs her fingers gently across the bruises and cuts, matching blue to red in the half light.

With a certainty that frightens her, she is now keenly aware of one thing. No matter what happened before, or what will happen next, they will have to face it together.

She leans her head against the bars, cold metal offset by the warm weight of his shoulder beneath her cheek.

No matter how wrong it may be, this feels _right_.

There will be no going back.

 


	8. Midnight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the first time in her life she must decide, can she leap and trust someone else to catch her?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to Rellie for getting me through this! You have made me a much better writer in the process!  
> To Cerulean8ullet for prompting this and get the whole runaway train in motion & to everyone who has read and enjoyed the story! Your comments have meant the world to me

 

Sleep is slow to find her.

Every muscle still aches after the fall, a condition no doubt made worse by her choice to spend most of the night hunched up on the concrete floor. Refusing to move from the side of her caged soulmate. Just thinking about it makes her feel ridiculous, her life becoming a bad holonovel in front of her eyes.

She’d only agreed to move once Leia had come, returning in the earliest hours of the morning to usher her out. She didn’t dare refuse then, not after being fixed with the ten mile stare of the General as she insisted Rey get some real sleep before morning. Ren had watched them leave, the weight of his gaze lingering long after the door had shut.

The lure of her bed after the exhaustion of the day should be enough to knock her out instantly, but it isn’t. She twists and turns in the sheets, the room feeling empty. Wrong somehow.

She can’t stop her thoughts from turning to what has happened, and what is yet to come. Sleep eludes her entirely as she questions their fate over and over. How long can they remain like this? Trapped in purgatory? She can see him so clearly, tired and bloodied and alone in that cage. Forever. The world forgetting about him as she spends her life pressed against the bars. More than once she has to force herself down into the pillows, fighting the urge to run to him right there and then. To slip past the guards and open his cage. Release him like a wounded animal back into the wild.

It’s only the practical side of her nature that stops her. There will be consequences to such a thing. Who is to say that, with his powers returned, he wouldn’t slip straight back into the heart of his darkness. Cutting a wave of death and destruction through the base. It would be on her. Her fault and hers alone.

She thinks again of the others. The pain Finn and Poe and Leia have suffered at his hands. The loss. The guilt is tangible, a bitter taste that she can’t swallow down. And yet here she is considering gambling with more.

If Snoke takes up Ren’s strings again they are all doomed. His hand was powerful enough to sway Ren into murdering his own father after all, what importance does she think her influence could possibly hold in comparison? If his Master commands it, does she honestly think she would escape him alive?

She sees his eyes again, the raw terror that filled his gaze as he held her face like she was made of the glass. “ _You were hurt. I couldn’t get to you.”_

He couldn’t kill her.

She knows it. No more than she could kill him. No matter what he did.

It’s pitiful and ridiculous and a certainty.

But there are a thousand and one other ways they can hurt each other.

The sun is still hours from rising, the night dragging on into eternity. There is still a long way yet till dawn. Rolling onto her side she stares at the uniform grey panelling of the wall and tries to shut down her mind. Just for a little while.

Their problems will wait until morning.

 

-

 

Ren will never sleep again.

Not now.

He can still feel the ghost of her hand in his, stubborn and tender all at once as she held onto him almost as hard as he held onto her. His skin is still warm from her, every place they touched becoming a shrine to her memory.

He sees her against the shadows of his cell. It’s her eyes that haunt him most. Fierce hazel through the bars, looking at him no longer as a monster, or a disappointment, a lost child, or murderer. But as himself. The man he is, somehow all of those things and none, infinitely worse and better. And _hers_.

He has seen the recognition of it now.

Tilting his head back with a groan he resigns himself to a restless night, counting the cracks in the ceiling as he waits for time to pass and her to return again. His reverie is broken when the door creaks open, hesitant and yet hurried as a guard he doesn’t know bustles into the room. Rushing across the space in an ill-fitting orange jumpsuit.

He scowls at them. How dare they interrupt him now?

How dare they send anyone but her?

“Lord Ren,” the man whispers too-loudly, cowering for a brief moment in front of the cell as he stuffs a bundle of black fabric through the bars. “The Order has not forgotten you. I’m here to secure your release. Please, hurry.”

His forehead creases in confusion as he leans forward to take up the proffered bundle. It is one of his many uniforms, fresh and clean and smelling exactly like he remembers, the sharp tang of the soap they use in the depths of the Finalizer. Something large falls from the bundle with a metallic thud.

His mask.

He looks up with a start, surprise ripe in his gaze as he takes in his unlikely rescuer.

“The fighters will be here any moment.” The man is saying, unlatching the lock with a stolen key. “We have to hurry.”

Understanding at last he struggles to his feet, muscles tense from sitting so long in one place. He strips his borrowed clothes and slips into the trappings of his former life. The clothes feel strange, familiar and alien all at the same time. The gloves sliding onto hands still tender by his earlier anguish. He hesitates at the mask. He has gone so long without it now it feels wrong in his hands, heavy and cold.

It had been his protection for so long, a physical manifestation of his rebirth into the dark. Concealing the features of his mortality and forming him into something more than human. It’s disconcerting how strange it seems to him. The thought of the smoked glass separating her from his gaze is intolerable.

_Rey._

He must find her, get to her before the Order do. But first…

The flunky they have sent is still watching him.

“My sabrer.” He bites out, the man flinching at the sound of his voice. A strangely satisfying reaction after the ignominy of capture. “Find it.” He gestures to the side room and the man hurries away. Stuffing the mask aside he pushes the heavy door open and strides away, the freedom of the movement almost intoxicating after his confinement. An alarm starts to wail somewhere across the compound.

The cold disconnection from his powers, the one he’s grown so used to, stretches and pulls at him as he reaches the hangar door. Snapping away at the last second, like he’s just stepped out into a hurricane

_Power._

It’s all he can feel, momentarily winded as the weight of it smothers him. It rushes through him, filling him up from the inside until he can practically feel his skin stretching from the influx. Like he might burst with it. He can feel everything. Every whisper of life in the entire worthless compound. More to that though, he can feel _her_ again. The bright blue pulse she has become in his mind, a beacon.

And just like that he realizes something has changed, the power feels different around him now. The darkness is there, a black familiarity that clings to him with razor claws. But they are not as tightly sunk as they were before. The raw anger that has fuelled him for over a decade has faded, its flames dampened by a feeling that is even more intense. Even more urgent. He shuts his eyes, focusing inward as he reaches for it’s core. The rage Snoke has nurtured in him.

It is not what he expects.

Instead of Master Snoke, instead of the hatred, he finds her.

She has become his lodestone.

The ground shakes beneath his feet as the familiar screech of starfighters rents the air. The early morning darkness turned to full daylight in the bright-red shine of their lasers.The lackey scurries to his side, the hilt of his lightsaber stretched out to him.

Igniting it with a familiar rush he squeezes his free hand, flexing his powers and sending the man down. Just to prove he still can.

He can no longer concern himself with what others wish for him. Even his Master.

He must find her.

 

-

 

She is finally drifting off when the world decides to end.

Gritting her teeth hard she swings upright, it’s pretty inconvenient timing.

Rolling out of bed and straight into her boots she flinches as the alarm starts wailing in earnest, momentarily blocking out the cacophony of fighter jets and explosions. Adrenaline gives new life to her tired muscles, blocking the bruises from her mind as she straps her belt to her waist, and runs for the door.

The General is heading for the situation room, barking orders and marshalling the troops with a steady calm. Rey nearly collides with her in the hallway.

“Where are you going?” Leia asks as she rights herself, face tight with concern. “It’s evac four orders.”

“Ren.” Is all she says. It’s enough. “Don’t wait for me. We - I’ll find my own way out.

Leia nods once, her concerns passed onto the younger woman’s shoulders, and Rey is gone. Leia has a base to save, Rey only has one man.

She powers forward, the world pitching under her feet as she finally finds the tarmac. A sudden invisible weight plows into her chest and for a moment she stumbles. The feeling fades to a familiar throb, an echo of her heartbeat, as it settles into the atmosphere.

She looks up, dodging blaster fire by inches, and sees him. Haloed in red and charging at her saber drawn.

He has found his own way out then.

For a moment he is the creature from her nightmares again. A black-cowled shadow, impossibly tall and fearsome as his long-legged gait eats up the space between them. An old fear surfaces, that he is coming for her. That this has all been a lie.

And then he’s swooping past her, blade arcing down to cleave the Storm Trooper rushing up behind her in two. The one she has been criminally negligent in not noticing. She’s not the only one distracted though. Ren turns. He’s not wearing his mask and she finds herself exhaling with gratitude, his familiar features bathed in the moonlight. His blade drops to his side as he meets her, hand reaching toward her as he searches her gaze in the halflight.

“Are you hurt?” The intensity of his eyes has her heart racing, the care in his voice bringing her up short. For a moment she can’t find the breath to answer.

But then she sees what he can’t. The danger is not yet over, a figure tears towards them across the compound blaster aimed squarely between Ren’s shoulders. She cannot tell who it is, friend or foe, all she knows is Ren is in his sights and and he hasn’t seen it yet.

She moves on instinct, elbowing him hard out of the way as something deep inside of her cries out. They can’t have him. He’s hers. The bolt grazes her shoulder but it doesn’t sway her from her course, the weight of her power rising effortlessly to her call. She flings him away with a gesture, sending him hurling through the air to smack into the side of the building. He hits harder than she intended and, with a guilty pang, she realizes he’s one of hers. A resistance member.

She doesn’t have time to dwell though. There is a battle going on around them and neither is safe from it. She turns on her heel, reaching out for him wordlessly. He reaches back, letting her pull him into the maze of pathways that make up the back of the compound. Worry and fury battling for dominance over his features as he tries to assess the damage to her shoulder.

“It’s nothing.” She gasps, drawing them further into the complex. “A graze.”

They slow as they hit the narrow alleyway that separates the mess hall from the scrap yard. He pulls her to stop, hidden from sight by the piles of salvage and suddenly alone together in the chaos. There are no bars between them now.

His fingers find the graze, checking for himself that she’s not hurt. The relief is palpable when he finds her words true. Looking at her with such devotion, such desire, that she can no longer see the destruction raining around them. Now is not the time for this. The world is on fire. Her friends are in danger. The base is coming down around their ears. But when he pulls her into his arms and drags her mouth to his she no longer cares.

This isn’t like before, a guilty subterfuge on a forgotten planet. It isn’t a trick or a plan or the last hope of a desperate animal. This is real. She welcomes it greedily, stretching up on her toes to press herself as close as she can get. When he kisses her it isn’t the loneliness that threatens to overwhelm her, or the desperation, it’s the heat. Burning, spiralling supernovas that burst inside her veins and fill her with the deepest sense of belonging she has ever known.

Right here. Right now. With him. She is home.

His teeth catch at her bottom lip and she _whimpers_. Lost in the electric feel of his hands gripping her waist, dragging down to her hips and hauling her off her feet entirely. She anchors her legs around him as he presses her into the alley wall, the weight of his body against her making the ache that’s grown within her almost painful in its intensity. Stoking the fire until she’s burning up from within. And still she needs more. So much more. To taste the salt of his skin. To press him into the dirt and cross every line that still stands between them until they are one completely.

A volley of laser fire lights the sky as a fighter screeches overhead. Too close. They pull back at last, breathing ragged as the base crumbles around them.

“Come with me.” His voice is low, rough against her skin as he presses kisses to the tender spot just below her earlobe. “Let's leave here together.”

She’s willing to agree to anything he asks in that moment. The sensation of his mouth as it moves down past her jawline to the tender skin of throat is enough to drive every coherent thought from her head. But then common sense rears its ugly head as the First Order TIE fighters make another pass.

She never wants to give this up. This feeling that’s taken root inside of her against all odds.  Not for anything. She has gone her whole life without ever truly belonging, an outsider amongst outsiders. But not with him. For whatever twisted reason the fates have, they fit. Without wanting to she has found her home in him. And she knows it can all go wrong in a heartbeat. There is so much between them they have yet to address, old wounds and new problems and the insurmountable barriers that divide them still.

“I won’t give into the dark.” Her voice is trembling, fingers threading in his hair as she lays herself on the line. “I can’t. Not even for you.”

“ _Fuck_ the dark.” He groans, pulling back to look at her through his lashes. “And the light. And everything else. Let it burn. I just want _you_.”

She hesitates, searching the endless black depths of his eyes for the truth. She thinks if she looks hard enough she can almost see stars in them, galaxies painted behind his irises, lit up but the red glow of the flames. “You won’t return to the Order?”

She can see the battle raging within him, but he shakes his head. His decision made. “No. No First Order, no Resistance. Just us.”

 _No Resistance_.

She thinks again of Finn, of Poe and Leia and even BB-8. They are the closest thing to family she has ever known, they have given her purpose and love and everything she ever wanted during those cold nights on Jakku. And she’s considering betraying them all. For him. For herself. Her heart aches, a sudden steely pain that sucks the air from her lungs, they have deserved so much more than her.  She has never been what they needed.

But Ren, he has become what she needs.

Another fighter passes. Swooping low over them, its shots singeing the ground around them in a rain of fire. Struggling against her own desire she pulls away, untangling herself from him and immediately hating the loss. She steadies herself, feet once more planted firmly on solid ground and looks at the chaos around them.

“Well?” He asks, desperation and desire in one. Temptation made flesh as he offers her his hand.

She makes her decision unhesitatingly, hoping they can forgive her for it one day.

“There’s a transporter in hangar four that’s just been fixed.” She nods, taking his hand and pulling him along the familiar pathway. “Let’s get out of here.”

She knows this is selfish.

She’s abandoning her friends, her mission. Disappearing with the enemy. For all she knows it could be a ruse, a trap he will spring as soon as they hit hyperspace. Even if it’s not they’ll probably destroy each other anyway, they have no credits and no clue where to go. He’s still so much the darkness, and she’s clinging to the light.

 

This is an unfathomable risk.

But she will take it.

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading my strange little story! I really hope you enjoyed it (please do drop a comment if you did, they mean so much to me!) 
> 
> I already have some nebulous plans for a sequel for this tale, since these two still have a long way to go yet, but I'm taking some time out to finish a few other Reylo stories first! I'd love it if you joined me on those adventures too but if not - thank you again for reading this!
> 
> May the force be with you! :D


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